African Agency in International Politics 2012041947, 9780415633536, 9780203526071

Table of contents :
African Agency in International
Politics
Copyright
Contents
Notes on contributors
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
1 African agency in international politics
Part I:
Negotiating internationally
2 Common positions as African agency in international negotiations: an appraisal
3 African agency in global trade governance
4 African agency in world trade undermined? The case of bilateral relations with the European Union
5 Back to business? UK policy and African agency
Part II:
Agency: new modes, new sites
6 Aid dependency as a limitation to national development policy? the case of Rwanda
7 ‘Image management’ and African agency: Ugandan regional diplomacy and donor relations under Museveni
8 Corporate social responsibility as a social development paradigm in Africa’s political economy: its emergence and implications for African Agency
Part III:
States and agency
9 State agency and state formation in Africa
10 Elusive agency: Africa’s persistently peripheral role in international relations
11 From weak state to savvy international player? Rwanda’s multi- level strategy for maximising agency
Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

ROUTLEDGE STUDIES ON AFRICAN POLITICS AND INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

African Agency in International Politics Edited by William Brown and Sophie Harman

African Agency in International Politics

This book analyses the rapidly increasing role of African states, leaders and other political actors in international politics in the twenty-­first century. In contrast to the conventional approach of studying how external actors impacted on Africa’s international relations, this book seeks to open up a new approach, focusing on the impact of African political actors on international politics. It does this by analysing African agency – the degree to which African political actors have room to manoeuvre within the international system and exert influence internationally and the uses they make of that room for manoeuvre. Bringing together leading scholars from Africa and Europe to explore the role and conception of African agency, this book addresses a wide range of issues, from relations with Western and non-­Western donors, Africa’s role in the United Nations and World Trade Organisation, negotiations over climate change, trade agreements with the European Union, regional diplomatic strategies, the character and extent of African state agency and agency within corporate social responsibility initiatives. African Agency in International Politics will be of interest to scholars and students of Africa’s international relations, African politics, development, geography, diplomacy, trade, the environment, political science and security studies. William Brown is Senior Lecturer in Government and Politics at The Open University in Milton Keynes, United Kingdom. Sophie Harman is Senior Lecturer in International Public Policy at Queen Mary, University of London, United Kingdom.

Routledge studies on African politics and international relations Edited by Daniel C. Bach, Emile Durkheim Centre for Comparative Politics and Sociology, Sciences Po Bordeaux.

1 Neopatrimonialism in Africa and Beyond Edited by Daniel Bach and Mamoudou Gazibo 2 African Agency in International Politics Edited by William Brown and Sophie Harman

African Agency in International Politics

Edited by William Brown and Sophie Harman

First published 2013 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business. © 2013 William Brown and Sophie Harman for selection and editorial matter; individual chapters the contributors The right of William Brown and Sophie Harman to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data African agency in international politics / edited by William Brown and Sophie Harman. pages cm. – (Routledge studies on African politics and international relations ; 2) Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Africa–Foreign relations. 2. Africa–Politics and government. I. Brown, William, 1967– II. Harman, Sophie. JZ1773.A919 2013 327.6–dc23 2012041947 ISBN: 978-0-415-63353-6 (hbk) ISBN: 978-0-203-52607-1 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Wearset Ltd, Boldon, Tyne and Wear

Contents



Notes on contributors Acknowledgements List of abbreviations

  1 African agency in international politics

vii x xi 1

W illiam B rown and S ophie H arman

ParT I

Negotiating internationally

17

  2 Common positions as African agency in international negotiations: an appraisal

19

S iphamandla Z ondi

  3 African agency in global trade governance

34

D onna L ee

  4 African agency in world trade undermined? The case of bilateral relations with the European Union

49

S tephen R . H urt

  5 Back to business? UK policy and African agency

65

T om C argill

ParT II

Agency: new modes, new sites

79

  6 Aid dependency as a limitation to national development policy? The case of Rwanda

81

S v en G rimm

vi   Contents   7 ‘Image management’ and African agency: Ugandan regional diplomacy and donor relations under Museveni

97

J onathan F isher

  8 Corporate social responsibility as a social development paradigm in Africa’s political economy: its emergence and implications for African Agency

114

S carlett C ornelissen

ParT III

States and agency

127

  9 State agency and state formation in Africa

129

D a v id W illiams

10 Elusive agency: Africa’s persistently peripheral role in international relations

143

S tefan A ndreasson

11 From weak state to savvy international player? Rwanda’s multi-­level strategy for maximising agency

158

D anielle B eswick



Bibliography Index

175 197

Contributors

Stefan Andreasson is Senior Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Queen’s University Belfast. Stefan’s specific research interests include: the legacy of settler colonialism; state-­business relations and their impact on development and democratisation; relations between north and south in the global economy; conservatism and conservative political thought; and Southern African politics. Stefan’s research has been funded by the ESRC World Economy and Finance Research Programme, the British Academy and the Nuffield Foundation. He is the author of Africa’s Development Impasse: Rethinking the Political Economy of Transformation (Zed Books) and is currently writing a book entitled Conservatism and Postcolonial Politics (under contract with Routledge). Danielle Beswick is Lecturer in the International Development Department, University of Birmingham. She recently co-­edited an edition of Third World Quarterly with Heather Marquette, bringing together papers from across disciplines on ‘Statebuilding, security and development’ (December 2011). Her research focuses primarily on the challenges of building security and democracy in post-­conflict states and the role that donors play in this process, particularly focusing on post-­genocide Rwanda. In 2011–2012, she completed research funded by the British Academy exploring the politics of post-­conflict identity-­building, comparing Rwanda and Sri Lanka. Danielle has co-­authored a textbook with Paul Jackson on Conflict Security and Development (Routledge, 2011) and has published articles on Rwanda’s role as a ‘donor darling’, its involvement in peacekeeping, the implications of strategies used for managing dissent after genocide, the impact of the national unity policy on the minority Batwa and the role of former ‘warlords’ in statebuilding in DR Congo. William Brown is Senior Lecturer in Government and Politics at The Open University. Dr Brown is a founder and the current convenor of the British International Studies Association (BISA) Working Group on Africa and International Studies. Previous research has included theoretical work (such as ‘Africa and international relations: a comment on anarchy and statehood’, Review of International Studies, 32, 1 (2006)), as well as contemporary political developments (such as ‘The Commission for Africa: results and prospects for

viii   Contributors the West’s Africa policy’, Journal of Modern African Studies, 44, 3 (2006)). He has written in particular on aid relations between UK/EU and Africa, including the recent article ‘Reconsidering the aid relationship: international relations and social development’, which appeared in a special issue of the journal The Round Table, 98, 402 (2009)), which he co-­edited. Tom Cargill is Assistant Head and Research Fellow of the Africa Programme at Chatham House, Royal Institute of International Affairs. He has been at the Institute since 2004, and his focus is on UK policy to Africa, as well as on the changing nature of international policy engagements with African states. Scarlett Cornelissen is Professor in the Department of Political Science at Stellenbosch University, South Africa, where she teaches International Relations. She conducts research on the role of Asian actors in Africa’s political economy, focusing in particular on Japan’s relationship with the continent. She has been a visiting professor at universities in Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka in Japan. She recently published Africa’s International Relations in the 21st Century (2012), co-­edited with Fantu Cheru and Tim Shaw. Jonathan Fisher is Postdoctoral Fellow in the International Development Department, University of Birmingham. His research focuses on the politics of aid and donor-­African relations and looks particularly at how and why donors see some states, such as Uganda, as reliable allies and others, such as Kenya, wholly differently, focusing on the African role in this dynamic. His doctoral thesis, undertaken at the University of Oxford, examined donor-­Ugandan relations since 1986, and between 2010–2012, he explored the role of donors in Uganda’s 2011 electoral process within a larger project funded by the Deepening Democracy Programme, Kampala and the ESRC (the latter as part of a one-­ year postdoctoral fellowship). His work on Uganda’s regional and international role has been published in African Affairs, 111, 444 (2012) and will also appear in the March 2013 issue of Journal of Modern African Studies, 51, 1. Sven Grimm is the Director of the Centre for Chinese Studies. He is a political scientist and has worked on external partners’ cooperation with Africa since 1999. The emerging economies’ role in Africa, specifically China–Africa relations, has featured in his work since 2006. Dr Grimm has studied in Hamburg, Ghana and Senegal and has obtained his PhD from Hamburg University/Germany in 2002 with a thesis on EU–Africa relations. He has previously worked with the London-­based Overseas Development Institute (ODI) and the German Development Institute/Deutsches Institut fuer Entwicklungspolitik (DIE) in Bonn/Germany. Sophie Harman is Senior Lecturer in International Public Policy at Queen Mary, University of London. Her research focuses on the political economy of governance, with particular reference to the World Bank and health and agency in international politics. She has published several books with Routledge, most recently Global Health Governance (2012) and The World Bank and HIV/AIDS (2010).

Contributors   ix Stephen R. Hurt is Senior Lecturer in International Relations at Oxford Brookes University. His main research interests are in international political economy and development, with a special interest in South Africa and European Union development policy. He has published articles in International Relations, Third World Quarterly and the Journal of Contemporary African Studies. In 2009, he was co-­editor of a special issue of The Round Table on ‘New directions in International Relations and Africa’, and his most recent work, entitled ‘The EU–SADC Economic Partnership Agreement negotiations: “locking-­in” the neoliberal development model in Southern Africa?’, was published in April 2012 in Third World Quarterly. Donna Lee is Professor and Director of the ‘Africa Activism in the WTO’ project at the University of Birmingham. She is currently writing a book on Africa in the WTO to be published by Routledge in 2013. She has published widely on multilateral trade negotiations and on African economy diplomacy, including The WTO After Hong Kong (with Rorden Wilkinson), The New Multilateralism in South African Diplomacy (with Ian Taylor and Paul Williams) and articles in a number of journals, including Third World Quarterly, Global Society, Review of International Studies, The Roundtable: Commonwealth Journal of International Studies and International Studies Perspectives. Donna is co-­editor of the Palgrave Diplomacy & International Relations series and a member of the editorial board of the recently launched International Journal of Diplomacy and Economy. David Williams is Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary University of London. His research interests are in the area of international relations of development, specifically the connections between development and global governance and between liberal political theory and the practice of state-­building and development. He has recently finished a textbook on International Development and Global Politics (Routledge) and has published widely on the World Bank, good governance, liberalism and domestic transformation. Siphamandla Zondi is Honorary Professor of politics at the University of South Africa and Director of the Institute for Global Dialogue (IGD) – a prom­inent African international diplomacy and foreign policy think-­tank based in South Africa. He was previously head of the IGD’s Africa and South Africa Foreign Policy programme for five years. Between 2000 and 2004, he headed Africa Institute’s regional integration (with specific reference to SADC) and sustainable development programmes. Dr. Zondi graduated with MPhil and DPhil in African Studies at the University of Cambridge. He has published widely in his areas of research interest, namely: regional integration and governance, South Africa’s international relations and foreign policy, global south studies and the diplomacy of public health. His recent publications are on the SADC mediation in Zimbabwe; the future direction of SA’s foreign policy; and Africa’s health governance. Dr Zondi writes a weekly political column for The Witness newspaper and a regular blog on the global south at www.e-­IR.info.

Acknowledgements

This book would not have been possible without a seminar series grant from the UK Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC, grant number EOA RES-­ 451–26–0810) and institutional support from the British International Studies Association (BISA) and the BISA Africa and International Studies Working Group; the International Development Department, University of Birmingham; the Africa Programme, Chatham House; the Conflict Analysis Research Centre, University of Kent; the Department of International Politics, City University London; and the Department of Political Science, University of Stellenbosch. Many thanks to Danielle Beswick, Tom Cargill, Anne Hammerstad and Scarlett Cornelissen for their invaluable contribution in organising the seminar series, Steve Hurt for much additional help and support and all the speakers and participants who contributed. Thanks to the web development team at the Faculty of Social Sciences at The Open University for hosting the seminar series and Working Group website. Thanks also to two anonymous reviewers whose comments were most helpful in preparing the book, to Alexander Quayle and Heidi Bagtazo at Routledge for their support in helping the book come to fruition and to Elizabeth Welsh for copy editing. Sophie Harman thanks Kieran Read for reminding her that if you book them, they will come during times of pre-­seminar anxiety, and for being consistently great; and the research team at City University for supporting the African Agency project. William Brown would like to thank Natalie Murray for suggesting, sometimes correctly, that it will all be alright in the end.

Abbreviations

ACP ACWL ADB AFRC AGOA AMISOM AU BADEA BASIC BEE BRICS CARIFORUM CNDP CoP CSI CSR DAC DDA DFID DRC EAC EBA EDF EDPRSP EPAs ESA EU FCO FDLR FOCAC GATS GATT GMO

African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States Advisory Centre in WTO Law African Development Bank Armed Forces Revolutionary Council, Sierra Leone African Growth and Opportunity Act African Union Mission in Somalia African Union Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa Brazil, South Africa, India and China Black Economic Empowerment Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa Caribbean Forum National Congress for the Defence of the People Conference of Parties Corporate Social Investment Corporate Social Responsibility Development Assistance Committee Doha Development Agenda Department for International Development Democratic Republic of Congo East African Community Everything But Arms European Development Fund Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper Economic Partnership Agreements Eastern and Southern Africa European Union Foreign and Commonwealth Office Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda Forum for China–Africa Co-­operation General Agreement on Trade in Services General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade Genetically Modified Organism

xii   Abbreviations GNI GSP GWOT HIPC IBSA ICTSD IGAD IMF INGO LDCs LRA MDGs MIFOTRA

Gross National Income Generalised System of Preferences Global War on Terror Heavily Indebted Poor Country India Brazil South Africa Dialogue Forum International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development Intergovernmental Authority on Development International Monetary Fund International non-­governmental organisation Least Developed Countries Lord’s Resistance Army Millennium Development Goals Ministry of Public Service, Skills Development and Labour, Rwanda MINAFFET Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Co-­operation, Rwanda MINALOC Ministry of Local Government, Rwanda MINECOFIN Ministry of Planning and Finance, Rwanda MINEDUC Ministry of Education, Rwanda MP Member of Parliament NAASP New Asian African Strategic Partnership NAFA National Forestry Authority, Rwanda NAM Non-­aligned Movement NAMA Non-­agricultural market access NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organization NEPAD New Partnership for Africa’s Development NGO Non-­governmental organisation NRM National Resistance Movement OAU Organisation of African Unity OECD Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development PRC Permanent Representative Council REPAs Regional Economic Partnership Agreements RPF Rwandan Patriotic Front SACU Southern African Customs Union SADC Southern African Development Community SFAR Student Financing Agency for Rwanda TAC Treatment Action Campaign TDCA Trade, Development, Co-­operation Agency TFG Transitional Federal Government TNC Transnational Corporation TRIPs Trade-­Related Intellectual Property Rights UK United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland UN United Nations UNAMID United Nations Assistance Mission in Darfur UNAMSIL United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone UNCTAD United Nations Conference on Trade and Development

Abbreviations   xiii UNDP UNECA UNEP UNSC UPDF USA USAID WTO

United Nations Development Programme United Nations Economic Commission for Africa United Nations Environment Programme United Nations Security Council Ugandan People’s Defence Forces United States of America United States Agency for International Development World Trade Organisation

1 African agency in international politics William Brown and Sophie Harman

The study of Africa’s international relations has for a long time been dominated by a concern to explain how the continent has been governed, shaped and mar­ ginalised by external actors. In periods of economic crisis and political upheaval (much of the 1980s and 1990s), in which powerful outside actors were prom­ inent, this approach was perhaps understandable, if misguided. Even in those years, the portrayal of Africa as the inert victim of exogenous forces bound by immovable structural constraints was always a limited understanding of inter­ national relations in the region. In the second decade of the twenty-­first century, when African actors established a sustained track record of assertive, high-­level diplomacy and during which the continent has seen long-­term economic growth, this approach has started to look ever more anachronistic. For this is an era in which African states, leaders and diplomats have been centrally engaged in global negotiations over climate change, world trade, aid disbursal and interven­ tion norms, in which African politicians have made strategic choices in how they reshape existing relations with Western donors and fashioned new relationships with rising powers, and one in which African non-­state actors have been critical both to the definition and implementation of policies in fields as diverse as gov­ ernance, security, health, environment and migration. It is high time that we approach Africa’s international relations from a different perspective. This book seeks to open up such a starting point for the analysis of Africa’s international relations by turning the established approach on its head. Rather than asking how do external actors determine African realities, we ask how far, and in what ways, African political actors are impacting on, and operating within, the international system? What are the key sites and sources of agency in Africa? What does African agency look like and how can we understand it? The shift is an important one. But it is not an effort to deny the very obviously tight corners which constrain Africa’s choices within the international system.1 These constraints, whether in the form of great powers, structures of economic dis­ advantage or disabling discourses, are real and persistent. However, analysis that begins with such constraints always struggles to articulate any real engagement with the political actions of those operating within these tight corners. A new starting point is, therefore, more of a signal of intellectual intent. It is an inten­ tion to take African politics, actions, preferences, strategies and purposes

2   W. Brown and S. Harman s­ eriously, to get beyond the tired tropes of an Africa that is victimised, chaotic, violent and poor. It is also an intent to focus on interaction, rather than one-­way domination; tensions between reproduction and transformation of structured relationships, rather than recurrence and repetition. The content of this book, and the beginnings of such analysis, stems from a series of seminars sponsored by the United Kingdom (UK) Economic Social Research Council (ESRC) in 2011.2 This series of seminars sought to approach Africa’s international politics from the standpoint of how African actors exert agency in international negotiations; in peace, conflict and intervention pro­ cesses; in transnational security issues; as well as reflecting upon the implica­ tions of African agency for international relations (IR) theory and Southern African perspectives on this. This book presents a range of research arising from different perspectives on African agency and on a diverse set of issues. These are all motivated by a desire to look at Africa’s international relations from a new perspective, to break away from the important, yet determinist, structural accounts of Africa’s international relations to question how African actors impact on the international system.

Agency and Africa This book seeks to effect such a turnaround in perspective by beginning with a focus on agency. Tackling questions of agency has a number of effects on the kind of analytical project we construct. For one, it returns to the desire to look at international relations ‘from the bottom up’, as, in different ways, both Clapham (1996) and Bayart (1993) have done in the past. Second, it puts the issues of political action by and purposes of African actors to the fore in our analysis by engaging with the constrained choices they face and respond to. Third, it encour­ ages greater engagement with those areas of fluidity, change and transformation as exist in African’s international relations. Finally, a focus on agency sheds light on those political actors and processes often ignored or unseen and accounts for difference and alternative spaces of political engagement within the inter­ national system. As we will explore further, there are at least two groups of questions around agency that contributions to this volume explore. The first approaches agency as a question about how much influence or power is being exerted and how much freedom of action African political actors have available to them. This group of questions involves enquiries into where and how African agents are making an impact on international politics and an identification of those factors, whether at the level of the international system or in domestic politics, which enable or con­ strain that influence. In this respect, it is worth pointing out that an analytical focus on agency does not presume any premature conclusions that African agents are necessarily having a significantly greater impact than at some previous time. It can certainly be argued, as suggested above, that there are issue areas where African agency seen in this way has increased; however, this is not a view shared by all observers, nor is it necessarily true in all fields. Indeed, authors

African agency in international politics   3 differ considerably in their assessments of African agency in contemporary cir­ cumstances. A focus on agency seen as an ability to influence or exert power does not, therefore, simply invert the conventional approach to stress an uncon­ strained voluntaristic view of agency, as Mamdani warned: ‘. . . it is only when abstracted from structural constraint that agency appears as lacking in historical specificity’ (Mamdani 1996: 10–11). What it does do is prompt us to identify such room for manoeuvre as exists and to explain the forces at work that open or close down those spaces. Analysis of agency also calls on us to explain what might be done with that room for manoeuvre. As a result, the second group of questions of agency is more concerned with explaining the kind of agency that is being enacted. This is both in terms of identification of the specific agents at work (organisations, states, leaders or civil society actors), the social context within which they act and, therefore, the political purposes they carry into the international arena (what is it that they seek to achieve or change; whose interests are being pursued). This necessitates consideration of the tools actors use to enact agency within the con­ texts in which they operate in and in pursuit of specific goals. This could be a reassertion of sovereign claims to governance, the playing of identity politics to garner the support of a specific population, naming and shaming of those that do not seek the same objectives or the use of force or financial bargaining and leverage. In many ways, African agency is different from other forms of agency, because of the nature the structural constraints on that agency. However, as this book argues, such constraints do not eclipse agency altogether; it just means that the tools and sites of such agency may differ and offer something new for our understanding. Before seeing how this analytical turnaround might shape different African diplomatic investigations, however, we need also to pause to consider the use of the term ‘Africa’. Why focus on Africa? And to what extent can we even talk about an ‘African’ agency at all without slipping into the very same stereotypes we are trying to escape? Africa is, in some senses, an exemplar of minor powers or ‘small states’ in the international system. As such, it provides a set of cases through which to explore the view of international relations that begins somewhere other than with the great powers. Notwithstanding the understandable focus of much IR on great powers, Africa does, in fact, matter for a range of policy areas, particularly those involving multilateral forums, international collective action or areas where there are marked relations of interdependence between the continent and outside powers. Africa matters in setting the global trade agenda, peace and conflict mit­ igation, discussions on rising powers and human security threats, such as climate change and health. In exploring questions of agency in international politics, Africa serves as something of a limit case – if anywhere might be characterised as most bound by existing structures of power, it is surely Africa. Major shifts in the polarity of the international system have not been significantly affected, or effected, by African states, and significant structures of economic and political governance appear to remain stubbornly resistant to programmes of change from

4   W. Brown and S. Harman any other than the biggest powers. Thus, it is important to consider why this is the case and how smaller African states can nevertheless exert influence or effect change. Such arguments also draw us into a more fundamental question that has to be addressed before developing ideas about African agency, namely, to what extent we can speak of Africa as a singular whole. Indeed, any attempt to define a field described as broadly as this one is bound to run the risk of partiality and over-­ generalisation. To speak of African agency, of course, is a non-­starter if that were taken unproblematically to be a unified and undifferentiated agency in international politics. Although a history of colonisation is part of the shared history of almost all African states, as Harrison argues, even here the diversity of experience and diversity of the impacts of colonialism make this a unity based on the ‘broadest of sweeps’ (Harrison 2010: 15). Aside from that, one might talk of an African agency in terms of the instances of collective assertion by African states of influence in the international arena, something we will look at in greater depth later, but which, as Zondi notes in his chapter, has a patchy record at best. A third notion of an African agency is more discursive, in the way that Africa is constructed as an entity both by outsiders and by African political actors and intellectuals (Harrison 2010: 16–17). This arises, in particular, in the realm of development policy, where common problems and solutions are frequently ascribed to ‘Africa’ as a whole. Assessing agency at this more generalised level therefore invites analysis of African agency in three senses. First are the concrete impact of African states acting collectively and the nature of that collective action in international forums. Second is the range of very different actors coming from the continent and who are identified by others, or by themselves, in some senses as African. Finally, there is the extent to which Africa as a category is utilised by African and non-­African actors to construct forms of political action internationally. This latter sense includes questions about whether such constructions create oppor­ tunities or constraint for such African collective action or individual state pro­ jects, as well as the ways in which African political actors themselves, both state and non-­state, utilise the notion of ‘Africa’ as a means to define and extend their actions in the external world.

Arenas and extent of African agency The range of arenas within which African political actors exert their influence is wide and contributions to this book represent an initial, but necessarily incom­ plete, exploration of some of the key arenas that the study of African agency in international politics has to engage with. Broadly, they focus on four, sometimes overlapping, locations: multilateral intergovernmental negotiations; bilateral relations with external powers; a realm of intra-­regional cooperation and fields of sub-­state or transnational political action. First, and most obvious to external observers, are the highly visible African interventions on the global stages of the United Nations (UN), World Trade

African agency in international politics   5 Organisation (WTO) and international financial institutions, such as the World Bank. All three of these have witnessed an upsurge in developing country assert­ iveness, within which African participation has been important. With the end of the Cold War and an increasingly active Security Council, the legitimacy and representativeness of the UN came into question. As Zondi points out in his chapter on international negotiations, as the largest regional block of countries – one-­quarter of the UN membership – Africa has been among those clamouring for a reform of the inherited post-­Second World War structures. However, it has been within the more specific policy areas of world trade and climate change that African numbers have been made to count for more. In the WTO, African states have moved from playing a critical, but relatively passive, role to engaging in a concerted effort to increase influence, build capacity to scrutinise proposals and to reject those which run counter to the declared developmental goals of the post-­Seattle Doha ‘Development’ Round. Such prominence was also displayed to a world audience as South Africa joined the emerging powers of Brazil, China and India in the critical stages of the Copenhagen conference on climate change in 2009. And, contrary to expectations, South Africa followed this up by hosting what, by climate change standards, was a relatively successful summit in Durban in 2011. Over and above these examples, African states have also played important roles in negotiations around international efforts to control conflict diamonds, landmines and trade in small arms and toxic waste, among others (Shaw et al. 2012). African membership, specifically South African member­ ship, of the G20, new alliances, such as the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and prominence in the UN General Assembly all add to the growing presence of African actors in international decision-­making and diplo­ macy (Cornelissen 2009). Less prominent, but often of more direct and immediate impact, has been a growing assertiveness of African states within the varied bilateral relationships they are involved in. This is not least in terms of relations with Western aid donors. It is in aid relationships, above all, that the image of the 1980s and 1990s – of a group of countries totally subservient to the external dictates and policy whims of Western states and the Bretton Woods institutions – took hold most strongly. While more careful studies of donor influence have unpicked parts of that image (Mosley et al. 1991; Killick 1998; Whitfield 2009), there is, neverthe­ less, a sense that even where African governments have shown resistance to par­ ticular donor interventions, this was often piecemeal and short-­term, rather than concerted and strategic. This is still the case for some countries. However, for others, the twenty-­first century has seen a much more overt effort to redefine the relationship with donors, from forging a new partnership at the global level via the G8, to national efforts to control and direct donor activity. Rwanda and Uganda both demonstrate this assertiveness very clearly, and three chapters in this volume assess the strategic thinking of the Kampala and Kigale govern­ ments in managing their external linkages. However, such bilateral relationships extend also to the security field, with which they overlap in many respects. The renewed importance of some African countries to post-­9/11 Western policy has

6   W. Brown and S. Harman given added sources of leverage, which has been utilised, especially by countries like Uganda. In Uganda, Fisher argues in his chapter ‘ “Image management” and African agency’, Museveni has combined diplomatic manoeuvring and image management, in order to create greater space to define relations with the West. It is these emerging sites and tools of African agency that present new insights into how we understand agency in international politics. Sitting somewhere between these two is a third arena of regional and sub-­ regional activity. This has been centred on the African Union (AU), but also encompasses the various sub-­regional organisations operating in the fields of security and economic integration. The arrival of the African Union in 2002 was a significant statement of a new era in African diplomacy, extending from the global stages down to the management of sub-­regional processes and relation­ ships. Indeed, the formation of the AU has given African states a platform from which to participate internationally, as well as forming the basis of a new phase of the management of intra-­regional matters. As such, it has been central both to ideas of an African renaissance and of finding African solutions to African prob­ lems (see Williams 2011). While old problems persist – underfunding, lack of capacity and the inability to live up to grand declarations being among them – the AU, despite being work in progress, has made a step change in the ability of Africa to act collectively, both within the region and outside of it (Coleman 2011; Engel and Porto 2010; Williams 2009). Finally, African agency is enacted in a diverse set of arenas at a greater remove from the formal state-­based and intergovernmental areas. Non-­state and trans­ national actors interact, either directly or mediated via national states, with inter­ national organisations and agencies of various kinds. This is apparent in the aid, environmental and health fields where non-­state actors are critical to the successful implementation of the policies of both national and international organisations. They also have the capacity, as in issues relating to the drugs trade and migration, to shape policy agendas themselves (as Hammerstad (2012) has explored, in rela­ tion to migration, security and South African foreign policy). Away from the direct intergovernmental dealings with states in the aid and security fields, it is often ‘non-­state’ actors and processes of migration, environmental change, trade and fin­ ancial linkages that help to define the interdependencies that Africa experiences with Western states. This overcomes one of the central limitations of understand­ ing agency – a reassertion of a preoccupation with states, specifically the African state – in order to shift the focus to a plethora of political activity that has an impact on both national and international policy. Moreover, transnational or non-­state sites of agency have become a preoccupation of the international community seeking to build ‘good governance’. For some external actors, the agency of non-­state actors is of primary importance in the promotion of democracy in Africa. Therefore, it is important to consider how non-­state actors operate within the parameters of what is seen as appropriate agency by international actors and to what extent non-­state actors challenge this appropriateness and offer an alternative idea of agency. Even if there is some agreement on the range of locations within which African agency is being enacted, contributions to this volume differ in their

African agency in international politics   7 assessments of the extent of African agency, both within each of these locations and between them. For example, while, for Donna Lee, the WTO has seen sus­ tained African efforts to participate fully in the Doha Development Round to some considerable effect in negotiations on cotton among other areas, Stephen Hurt argues that this success has come at a price. Confronted by developing country assertiveness in the global forum, major powers have shifted their focus to bilateral and regional deals exemplified by the European Union’s (EU) negoti­ ation of Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) with African sub-­regional groupings where it is better able to constrain African bargaining power. For Zondi, also, steps forward in African collective influence in UN reform and climate change negotiations won through the formation of common negotiating positions have been weakened by the persistence of strong and divergent national preferences. Fisher, Beswick and Grimm all outline ways in which weak African states are able to actively manage relations with much more powerful allies through image management, balancing of threats and active coordination, respectively. However, they all recognise limitations to these strategies. In reviewing the UK’s role, Tom Cargill argues that while boosting Africa’s stand­ ing in policy circles under Tony Blair’s premiership, the UK has been inconsist­ ent, often presuming to speak for Africa and Africans. In making more general assessments, Andreasson sees state weakness in Africa as persistently undercut­ ting attempts by the continent’s governments to exert themselves in a hostile international system. These divergent takes on the extent of African agency emphasise the multiple determinants of agency within global politics and reinforce the argument that the analytical focus on African agency does not presume a picture of increasing African influence. Indeed, one of the messages of the contributions to this book is that the picture is very mixed, issue-­specific and fluid. However, the examples covered demonstrate an ability of some African actors to be able to make use of the contingencies of the moment that they encounter in a proactive way. The period since the start of the twenty-­first century has certainly witnessed deliber­ ate efforts on a wider canvas to try to redefine the relationship with, and Africa’s role within, the international system on a broader basis. These have not all been successful and the old issues of power that Andreasson emphasises so strongly continue to constrain such agency. Nevertheless, it is only by beginning with a focus on agency that we can tease out such possibilities and constraints, suc­ cesses and failures.

Determinants and purposes of agency The analysis of agency has to go beyond such quasi-­quantitative assessments of influence, important though they are. Explanatory and normative judgements of African agency require us to tackle questions with regard to those factors that make exercises of agency possible and those that limit the reach and scope of agency. Moreover, it is important to consider how to characterise and conceptu­ alise different types of agent and their political purposes. A key factor in the

8   W. Brown and S. Harman opening up of greater space in the international arena for African states’ activism has been the tectonic shifts in power at the international system level, especially through the impact of powers such as China and India in the institutions of inter­ national governance. Shifts in polarity – to what Siphamandla Zondi, following Huntington, refers to as a ‘uni-­multipolar hybrid’, with the US’s unquestioned military advantage matched by a broader dispersal of economic power (Hunting­ ton 1999) – have altered the landscape of international governance. For Zondi, the increasing importance of multilateralism in a multipolar world has had a pos­ itive effect on Africa’s participation in global affairs (see Zondi: Chapter 2). None have been more important than China, whose rise has done much to reshape overall polarity in the international system and, together with India and Brazil, in multilateral forums. This, in turn, has enabled African governments to try to make numbers count where they can, and the pursuit of common positions by the AU is a clear attempt to seize the potential provided by this opening. As Lee demonstrates, within the WTO, this has had some success, and as the main players become more finely balanced, more room is provided for countries with less market power to exert influence. China’s and India’s increasing importance in the aid field (see Grimm: Chapter 6; Taylor 2012) have also done much to enable some African states to fashion increasing leverage in bilateral relations with Western donors. However, these geopolitical shifts have not provided unqualified benefits to African agency. For one, the more difficult it is for major powers to lead and control multilateral forums, the more their temptation to sideline those arenas, as Hurt’s analysis of the EU shows. The paradox for African states is that such an impasse leaves them with something of a pyrrhic victory – the influence of ‘saying no’ in the WTO, but without much prospect that the forum can deliver policy outcomes in the form of a more development-­friendly trade regime. In addition, new Asian powers have their own agendas, and African states risk being pawns in their contests with the West, as the climate change negotiations showed. As China, the EU and the US battled it out, having Africa ‘on side’ began to matter more than hitherto. Against this, however, China’s success in getting Africa’s numbers lined up behind a negotiating stance (against binding limits on its emissions), which cannot deliver the necessary changes needed to protect Africa from the worst effects of climate change, may leave a more dam­ aging legacy. For Africa, making use of this changed geopolitical context rests on the twin pillars of collective action and pivotal states. As we have noted above (and as explored further by Zondi), the extent to which the AU can articulate a collective voice for Africa is heavily influenced by the role of South Africa and Nigeria. When these two states operated in concert, especially once Nigeria had moved back to civilian rule in 1999, Africa enjoyed a ‘golden age’ of diplomacy (Landsberg 2011, 2012; Abegunrin 2009). Both used their capacity and inter­ national standing to make a mark on the global stage, but did so in pursuit of a shared continental ambition. The dissipation, even crisis, of this alliance has meant that these advances have also waned. While Andreasson argues that even

African agency in international politics   9 South Africa’s agency is undermined by domestic weakness, it has done more to sustain a presence and role internationally than Nigeria. South Africa’s position as Africa’s leading state also comes with its own problems, creating a dual imperative to speak for itself and for Africa as a whole. The fate of the AU as the collective voice of the continent is also brought into doubt by the fluctuations of influence exerted by such key states, both in terms of how their international standing reflects upon the regional body and in the more mundane, but vital, issues of funding and capacity building for the AU. An investigation into state agency, even for the most powerful African states, necessarily leads us into questions of the agency of leaders and issues of state capacity. Noted by several contributors to this book, African diplomacy has relied on the particular role played by individual leaders. Such personalised policy confers both benefits and weaknesses on African agency. When leaders coalesce around a shared vision, as claimed during the ‘golden age’ (Landsberg 2011), it marshals key African states to a common cause. However, rivalries and conflicting personal loyalties also sow division, as has been seen in West Afri­ ca’s response to the Côte d’Ivoire crisis in 2011, South Africa’s response to the Zimbabwe crisis and in the AU’s response to the Libyan conflict in 2011. Leadership and ‘big man politics’ remains a component of state agency in Africa; however, this is not to obscure the other sites of agency among women and young people, which are increasingly challenging these prominent, but often stereotyped, aspects of African agency. For all African states, questions of internal strength – policy development, bureaucratic capacity and diplomatic presence – all play a key role in enabling participation in, and influence over, external relations. Geopolitical strength, par­ ticularly as translated in the realm of international negotiations, is critically dependent on state capacities and whether African states have the institutional and political strength to effectively consider interests and formulate and articu­ late policies. As Whitfield and Fraser have argued, a strong sense of national interest and the ability to carry that forward has been important for African states in bilateral aid relationships (Whitfield and Fraser 2010). In both bilateral and multilateral aid negotiations, countries such as Rwanda and Ethiopia have both been able to preserve some policy autonomy from donors, partly as a result of internal political processes and conditions (Whitfield and Fraser 2010). As such, capacity questions here mesh with a series of other internal and external factors that determine recipients’ negotiating strength in aid bargaining, others being wider economic conditions, geopolitical contexts, levels of indebtedness and institutional factors, such as the history of relations with donors. Contributors to this book differ in their assessments, from Andreasson’s negative evaluation of state strength to Lee’s more positive account of capacity building within the WTO to Beswick’s and Grimm’s accounts of strategic thinking in Rwanda’s foreign policy. Such questions also take us into more complex issues around how we under­ stand state agency itself – an issue explored in depth by Williams’ contribution, where external and internal influences combine to shape the nature of that

10   W. Brown and S. Harman agency and the acceptance of African states as agents externally. But it also draws our attention to the political character of African agency and the purpose of such agency. Such normative questions – whether increased African agency is to be welcomed – rest, to a significant degree, on how one judges these political purposes. Some Western state institutions, like the World Bank and some NGOs, clearly present the idea that it is to be welcomed, having provided support for African capacity building in world trade and climate change negotiations, as well as in providing funding for the AU and its security related operations. Some of this may be motivated by a sense of global justice – that it is right that weaker states have a greater say in international politics (certainly, that is the rhetoric used by the UK Department for International Development (DfID) (2009)). In different ways, the debate over UN reform and new aid norms as expressed in the Paris Declaration also point towards rhetorical support for weaker states to have a greater voice in international affairs. There are also, of course, significant elements of self-­interest in such external support for greater African agency. In climate change negotiations, a larger voice for Africa generally works in the EU’s favour by supporting the EU’s call for a binding treaty on emissions reduc­ tions (a situation which the EU sought to play on in the run-­up to the Durban summit).3 In the security field, the unwillingness of Western states to provide troops for peacekeeping operations means that there is little alternative but to develop greater African capacity in that area (Coleman 2011; Engel and Porto 2010; Williams 2009). However, judgements on African agency are also bound up with the political effects of increased agency, and who benefits from it, within Africa. Beswick’s analysis of Rwandan foreign policy clearly suggests that the aim of regime sur­ vival is key to Rwandan strategy. This argument returns to the well-­established issue of the ways in which regimes can draw resources from the international arena (aid, tariffs, climate change funding) to bolster their domestic positions (Clapham 1996; Bayart 1993; Taylor 2010). Viewed in this way, increased agency enacted via the prominent role of leaders in African diplomacy takes on a slightly different hue and draws us into the structured political hinterland of African agents themselves. Inevitably, it means that analysis of African agency internationally requires a careful engagement with the political strategies, rela­ tionships and purposes of political leaders within Africa. Both Fisher and Beswick see internal political priorities of Museveni and Kigame, which diverge from stated Western interests to a considerable extent, as playing a significant role in shaping their external diplomacy. Finally, political discourses and policy framings have a bearing on the scope for, and character of, African agency. Within the multilateral arena, Lee argues that changes in trade discourse have had a major impact in re-­framing the con­ tests within the WTO. States which lack market power, she argues, ‘make up for this structural subordination by using discursive power’ (Lee 2012: 86). In a dif­ ferent context, Fisher analyses how Museveni’s government pursued an active policy of trying to manage and shape donor perceptions of Uganda in a way which keeps donors ‘on side’, despite serious misgivings about the domestic

African agency in international politics   11 political situation in Uganda and the country’s involvement in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) conflict. ‘Through managing donor perceptions’, Fisher claims in Chapter 7, ‘the Ugandan regime has chosen to subvert the struc­ tural logic of aid dependence’. In several other contexts, most notably in health and climate change, the effects of ‘securitising discourses’ have also been hotly debated in terms of their effects on African agency, enabling agency by increas­ ing funding for HIV programmes and participation in high-­level meetings, but also limiting that agency by increasing the external shaping of policy in a par­ ticular securitised direction (McInnes and Rushton 2010). Cargill also notes how the particularly British discourses on Africa and the role of the idea of Africa within Britain has increased the importance of Africa within UK government policy, but in a particular way, with Africa seen as the poor and disadvantaged ‘Other’ in need of British assistance. What all this tells us about African agency is that it is determined by a fluid combination of external and internal factors dependent on the issue in which agency is being expressed and the site of such agency. External factors, such as the legitimacy conferred to different forms of African agency and geopolitical shifts within the international system, all require specific forms of agency and intentions for those African actors expressing it. Internal factors, such as leader­ ship, position in the region and the changing political climate all determine the purpose of agency and how that purpose is viewed by others. Issues of framing and purposes of agency open up wider questions as to legitimate agency and who or what infers legitimacy on a specific form of agency. Legitimacy, to a degree, is the value ascribed to agency by internal and external actors and the outcome of expressions of agency; in this sense, it is a contested and messy grey area, which is context-, agent- and issue-­specific.

Outline of the book This book is organised into three parts. The first part, ‘Negotiating internation­ ally’, considers African agency on the global scale, by looking at agency in the context of trade negotiations, aid discussions and the United Nations. Chapters in this part of the book draw on the problems of common positions, limitations on space of agency and how agents manage the shifting parameters of negoti­ ation, but also outline the clear sites and spaces in which African agency has been prominent. Siphamandla Zondi assesses the efforts of the 54 member states of the African Union, who constitute about 28 per cent of the UN membership, to harmonise their individual negotiating positions on major international issues, in order to turn their numbers into real political clout. While the African Group has existed in UN processes since the 1960s, it is only in the last two decades that it has adopted a more a proactive approach for advancing nuanced and dis­ tinct positions in key international negotiations. The strengthening of continental and regional integration has given further impetus to this notion of concerted diplomacy by Africa. Using examples of the UN reform and climate change negotiations as case studies, Zondi suggests that, increasingly, the common

12   W. Brown and S. Harman African positions are derived more from an enlightened view of Africa’s common interests, than from the interests of dominant African states. Yet this positive trend in African diplomacy is undermined by a number of problems, including weak leadership, the persistence of national interests and the exclusion of civil society in African diplomacy. Donna Lee’s careful analysis of the impact of African countries within the WTO is one of the key examples of a claimed increase in African agency. Focus­ ing on the use of discourse, Lee shows how African states have utilised the lan­ guage of development within trade negotiations to emerge as key protagonists in the WTO Doha Development Round. This increased activism is surprising, given the relatively weak market power of states such as Kenya, Burkina Faso, Mali and Egypt in the global trade system. These, and other African states, have overcome some of the structural power constraints inherent in the global trade regime by developing more effective diplomatic capacity in WTO trade negotia­ tions. However, they have also utilised the shifts in trade discourse with an increased prominence of developmental concerns in the Doha Round, so as to shape a ‘won’t do’ strategy to block agreements in non-­agricultural trade negoti­ ations that, they argue, would not enhance their economic development. A different interpretation of African agency in trade negotiations is offered in Stephen Hurt’s chapter, which suggests a level of scepticism concerning the extent of African agency in contemporary international politics. Defining agency as an ability to change existing material and ideational structures, he argues, from a political economy standpoint, that the major inequities of world trade remain stubbornly in place. Taking up the story from Lee, Hurt claims that while African countries may well have made advances within the WTO forum, this very success has led to a shift in tactics by the advanced countries and a mush­ rooming of bilateral and mini-­lateral trade initiatives, within which the structural power of the major economies is retained. African bargaining strength is weaker here (partly, and paradoxically, because of the diversion of African diplomatic resources to the WTO), and EU leverage is greater. While Hurt notes that there has been some resistance to the EU’s proposed EPAs, in this sub-­regional set of agreements, the EU remains committed to achieving what it could not (yet) achieve in the WTO. In the final chapter of the ‘Negotiating internationally’ section, Tom Cargill looks at UK policy towards Africa, tracing the emergence of a renewed focus on Africa by the Labour governments (1997–2010) and assessing its impact on African agency. While this shift combined with African diplomatic initiatives to elevate Africa up the agenda of the G8, in particular, older ideas about Africa as a place where Britain could ‘do good’ undermined the gains that this had for African agency internationally. Blunders under the Blair government, notably on Zimbabwe, and an assumption by Labour ministers that they would be received with open arms by Africa raised further question marks. The transition to the Conservative-­led coalition in 2010 heralded a partial rethink of UK policy with UK national interests, particularly over trade, coming more to the fore. Conflicts over the Libya crisis further strained relations and added to the general feeling

African agency in international politics   13 that Africa’s influence and interests were being downgraded in UK government circles. The second part of this book, ‘Agency: new modes, new sites’, considers emerging areas and spaces for African agency in the contemporary era by reflect­ ing upon the growth of new tools of agency, such as public relations; the oppor­ tunities that the presence of new actors, such as China, present to African agency; and the changing arenas for agency in the business world created by the rise of corporate social responsibility norms. Sven Grimm’s chapter focuses on Rwanda and the distinctive ability of the Kigali regime to fashion coherent, long­term strategies for managing its external affairs. Grimm analyses the relationship between Rwanda and its donors and notes how successful it has been in persuad­ ing Development Assistance Committee (DAC) donors to align with Rwandan sectoral priorities in aid allocations. Here, Rwanda has made good political use of the Paris Declaration to act as coordinator of Western donors. However, in relations with non-­DAC donors, particularly China, Rwanda has been less suc­ cessful, and, thus, China retains considerable control over its aid programmes in Rwanda. While China’s rise has, therefore, assisted Rwanda’s leverage over Western donors, it has not been an unqualified benefit to the country’s agency, although Grimm concludes that Rwanda could utilise other resources in its rela­ tionships with China. Jonathan Fisher develops analyses on how African states manage external relations to maximise agency by focusing on how Museveni’s government has pursued an active policy of trying to manage and shape donor perceptions of Uganda in a way which keeps donors ‘on-­side’, despite serious misgivings about the domestic political situation in Uganda and the country’s involvement in the DRC conflict. However, this strategy relies on two other conditions: first, donors are unwilling to impose harsh conditions on countries that are considered useful in other respects, such as in trade or foreign policy; second, limited detailed donor knowledge of recipient countries allows space for such ‘perception management’. Scarlett Cornelissen finishes this assessment of new sites of agency by con­ sidering the role of corporate social responsibility in sub-­Saharan Africa and how it both creates and limits space for agency. For Cornelissen, corporate social responsibility brings with it an added layer of complexity for agency and negoti­ ation in the African context. The chapter marks the rise of corporate social responsibility in the region and the changing balance between public and private agency and shifting relations between the state and civil society and their capa­ cities to influence policy and ideas. The third section of the book addresses the ever-­pertinent and present issue of ‘States and agency’. This section reflects on what is particularly African about problems of state agency and the practice of agency, with particular relevance to state weakness, leadership and the reassertion of global perceptions and prescrip­ tions of such problems. It is the notion of the ‘acceptable face’ of state agency that preoccupies David Williams’ contribution. Williams argues that problems of understanding state agency are not specific to Africa; however, he argues that

14   W. Brown and S. Harman what is different about African state agency is the extent to which state agency is subjected to greater external scrutiny than other states in the international system. Any state agency has to be produced and reproduced through political and other practices, Williams maintains, in terms of the ways in which the state is perceived to act as a whole unit, the extent to which states generate effective collective action (‘large scale organised “doings” ’) and the extent to which others’ actions are seen as state actions through processes of authorisation and representation. Indeed, it is through insistence by external actors on particular authorisation rules (such as democracy) and particular interpretations of what effective state action should amount to, that external actors seek to shape the particular character of African state agency. ‘In other words’, Williams argues: The politics of state agency played a central role in the internal and inter­ national politics of many newly formed African states. . . . In more recent times western states and agencies have become more and more concerned with the authorising rules within all African states that would generate legit­ imate representation. Stefan Andreasson makes one of the more pessimistic assessments of the extent of African agency in this book. Surveying the place of weak states in the inter­ national system, he maintains that all African states, to a greater or lesser extent, are weak states and that internal weakness forms a self-­reinforcing process with exter­ nal weakness. ‘Because we live in a system in which state capabilities and strength remains central to the pursuit of national interest’, Andreasson maintains, ‘. . . it is Africa’s relative, and in some cases near-­complete, lack of empirical statehood . . . which explains its persistently peripheral role’. Even in South Africa, which Andreasson takes as the strongest case with which to test his argument, signs of internal weakness threaten its ability to act as the continent’s voice internationally. The emphasis on making effective use of the room for manoeuvre that does exist is explored further by Danielle Beswick. Beswick resurrects Steven David’s theory of ‘omnibalancing’ to reinterpret Rwanda’s management of its foreign relations, emphasising the active use of regional and international alliances to create space for state agency. Originally formulated to analyse developing coun­ tries’ foreign policies in the context of the bipolar Cold War system, Beswick reinterprets the theory to analyse the foreign policy choices facing Rwanda, drawing attention to the way in which Rwanda has appeased regional adversar­ ies and placated international allies, in order to free up state capacity to deal with domestic political challengers. It was this combination that led Rwanda into its surprise alignment with the DRC in 2009 to tackle Congo-­based militia groups, Beswick argues, thus extricating Rwanda from international criticism of its involvement in the DRC and reducing the potential for domestic opponents to ally with international donors. Beswick argues that the theory allows us to see how: ‘ “weak” African leaders, seemingly lacking agency, play off threats at dif­ ferent levels in order to prevent a perfect storm of alignment between domestic threats and international actors . . .’

African agency in international politics   15 Taken together, the chapters diverge, both in their assessments of the extent of African agency and in judgements about its character and purposes. Given the very different agencies at work and the different contexts within which they operate, this is perhaps not surprising. However, what they share is a serious engagement with the realities facing African political actors in the international system and an intention to assess the emerging spaces for African agency. Whether, in an international system that is in a historic period of change, we will see African agents able to find enough room for manoeuvre to significantly reshape their international political environment – and, indeed, whether they ­seriously try to do so – remains to be seen.

Notes 1 The phrase comes from Lonsdale (2000). 2 Economic and Social Research Council grant EOA RES-­451–26–0810 African Agency in International Politics. The findings of the series and the questions it engendered are largely presented here. However, those papers that specifically focused on the security dimensions of African agency are published in a special issue of the journal Conflict, Security and Development (CSD), edited by Danielle Beswick and Anne Hammerstad. The issue of security is addressed implicitly in some of the chapters in this book, but more detailed and issue-­based accounts of agency and security are explored in the special issue of CSD. 3 ‘Durban climate deal: the verdict’, Guardian, 12 December 2011, online article, avail­ able at: www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/12/durban-­climate-deal-­verdict (accessed 8 December 2012).

Part I

Negotiating internationally

2 Common positions as African agency in international negotiations An appraisal Siphamandla Zondi The Africans were aware that because of their relative weakness they could achieve little through bilateral diplomacy. Therefore, they tended to gear their efforts at achieving their objective through collective international action. (Arkhurst 2010: 157)

Africa is fast becoming a key regional actor in multilateral platforms and international negotiations. Constituting some 28 per cent of the total membership of the United Nations (UN), the 54-member Africa Group is the strongest of five geopolitical regions through which UN negotiations are coordinated and carried out. Only this and the Latin American and Caribbean Group have no representation on a permanent basis in the UN Security Council (UNSC) – the most powerful organ of the UN. Yet, increasingly, the main issues that dominate the UN agenda, in general, and the UNSC business, in particular, concern transnational problems experienced in their most acute form in Africa. For this reason, the continent relies on coordinated and common negotiation positions, in order to re-­centre itself in the multilateral system. On this basis, it has had opportunities to make effective use of its marginal seats on the table, from the three non-­permanent seats in the UNSC to 14 seats in the UN Economic and Social Council, 13 seats in the Human Rights Council, a possible presidency of the UN General Assembly from time to time and other more ad hoc opportunities in international negotiations. In trying to understand the extent to which Africa is forging a distinct role as an actor in international negotiations and, by implication, in global politics in general, this chapter analyses Africa’s common positions in international negotiations, with special reference to UN reform and climate change as experiments in agency. It echoes the view by Roman Grosfonguel (2009) that the global hierarchies of political and economic power that were established under imperialism and colonialism, and in which Africa was subordinated, did not cease with political independence. Through globalisation, they continue to shape what Gayatri Spivak terms a neocolonised postcolonial world, in which the West occupies the apex. This helps place Africa at a disadvantage in global decision-­making, which increasingly takes place through international negotiations. In its attempt to

20   S. Zondi uncover its agency, by which we mean its ability to exert influence in international negotiations, Africa is using common negotiating positions, in order to produce negotiation outcomes that benefit weak African countries. Common negotiating positions demonstrate, to an extent, the value of its activism by enabling it to impact on a complex power system designed to place it on the margins. This chapter suggests that through the African Group at the UN and the African Union (AU), Africa has exercised agency – its ability to exert influence in international relations and global affairs. In doing this, Africa has used its actorness (Jupille and Caporasso 1998) – its recognised role as a unified multilateral negotiator in negotiations or actor in global affairs in general, and its activism or its active participation in international forums to boost its agency. For this reason, the analysis of African agency in global affairs benefits from understanding that this would not have been possible without the recognition of Africa as a united actor capable of speaking on behalf of 54 countries and as an active participant in negotiating forums. This is because recognition by members of the international community has legitimatised its actorness and enhanced its capacity to negotiate in the collective interest of otherwise weak countries (Groen and Niemann 2010). African common positions have represented the expression of the collective interest of African countries delegated to chosen African negotiating teams to pursue. This happens in spite of the limiting effect of global power asymmetry, the diluting influence of cross-­regional alliances in the international system, the growing role of new hierarchies of power that come with the bigger emerging powers like the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) and the persistence of divisive national interests within the African bloc. The chapter aims to demonstrate that there is an emerging (although not unique) agency on the part of Africa in international negotiations and that it finds its expression in the currency of common positions.

Africa’s rising activism in context While the global power asymmetry and power gamesmanship of the Cold War constrained the role of regional intergovernmental groups in international negotiations, especially within the UN system, the post-­Cold War era opened some scope for active roles by a whole array of actors, including intergovernmental organisations. The AU and the Africa Group in the UN have taken this opportunity for activism by adopting concerted efforts to counterweigh the marginal­ isation of Africa in global power politics and negotiation outcomes. The end of the Cold War has, however, not led to the end of the global power asymmetry. The US has emerged as the only superpower and the West as a dominant power configuration in a ‘uni-­multipolar’ system (Huntington 1999: 243), while the growth of middle and regional powers has created some basis for counterbalancing (Chomsky 1997: 1–12). The hierarchies of power that can be traced back to Western imperialism as frequently argued by Immanuel Wallerstein (1974a, 1974b) have remained in place. Thus, the marginal position of

Common positions in international negotiations   21 Africa as an object of subjectivity has persisted. Ramon Grosfoguel (2009) suggests that, in the process, the non-­West continues to be regarded as ‘a people without writing’ as in the sixteenth century, ‘a people without history’ as in the eighteenth century, ‘a people without development’ in the twentieth century and ‘a people without democracy’ in the twenty-­first century. Chomsky (1997: 2) argues that, worse, the marginalised are being asked to forget the terrible past and move on, even if justice has not been offered. Africa is aware of the fact that its disadvantage is an artefact of history and that this history has not ended (Irene 1991). However, Africa has been far from silent and subservient in this global power hierarchy. To borrow from debates on Gayatri Spivak’s ‘Can the subaltern speak?’ essay, the subjugation of the Other can only be assured when their agency, or ability, to speak and find ways to circumvent the hierarchy of power is not recognised (Maggio 2007). In this sense, the push for solidarity and regional integration internally and collective action in global forums is a creative way in which the marginalised Africa speaks. In 2006, the AU Commission’s chairperson suggested that the majority view amongst African governments was that ‘the co-­ordination and harmonisation of Africa’s position in some key areas of policy-­making’ was an expression of Africa challenging its marginalisation (Department of International Relations and Cooperation 2006). According to Frederick Arkhurst, a veteran Ghanaian diplomat who served his country and the African Group at the UN for three decades from the early 1960s, what would become the hallmark of African diplomacy after independence was ‘a certain radicalism to the collective African posture in international politics’ and that this was generally against Western hegemony, because dominant Western countries were ‘patently pro-­colonialism’ (2010: 157). For this reason, collective action was, in his view, a part of the continued pursuit of decolonisation and a fight against racism. A history of political solidarity against colonialism was transferred to resistance of new forms of subjugation by the same forces as those present during colonial rule (Arkhurst 2010: 157–158). This coordination of positions was, thus, also a way of opening a space for Africa in a fluid international environment in which multilateralism has become more significant than before. There is a realisation that the power of having large numbers of states in any international negotiations forum is of no value in the absence of coherent and concerted negotiating positions. Arkhurst (2010) suggests that because of their marginalisation by the West, African countries realised the power of their collective action, and, ‘[t]herefore, they tended to gear their greatest efforts at achieving their objectives through collective international action in organisations’. Another reason is that common positions are seen as preparation for the full integration of Africa into a single political entity in which African countries would pool their sovereign power for the common good, European Union (EU) style (Department of International Relations and Cooperation 2006). Common positions have also become the norm as part of Africa’s search for its actor status in a changing international society. As Tim Murithi (2007) shows,

22   S. Zondi ‘today, Africa is attempting to forge an identity as a collective entity capable of functioning as an equal partner in the international sphere’. However, the redefini­tion of Africa’s relations with the centre of global power from paternalism to partnership is a work in progress. Similarly, the shift from sentimental solidarity towards issue-­based pragmatic collective agency in international negotiations is far from complete. For this reason, Africa’s agency in international diplomacy is, therefore, to be considered as an emerging trend, rather than an established practice. Not all common positions have been fully used in negotiations and only a few have been consistently and persistently used to guide Africa’s participation in protracted negotiations, especially where global powers have strong national interests. To date, there are more than 30 African common positions recorded, which cover 27 areas of international public policy. The most prominent are common positions on climate change; UN reform; Africa’s external debt; universal access to HIV/AIDS prevention, treatment and care; genetically modified organisms in agriculture; Africa’s digital inclusion; and the EU’s economic partnership agreements (Kohnert 2008). Most positions are focused on long-­term questions and are designed to contribute to transforming structures that consign Africa to the periphery. They are also formed in the hope that they will strengthen the practical expression of African solidarity, particularly the idea of providing African solutions to African problems. A few common positions are event-­specific, such as the position on arms trade negotiations, on the high-­level meeting of the UN General Assembly’s Special Session on AIDS (one for 2006 and a different one for 2011) and the position on the fifth World Trade Organisation (WTO) Ministerial Conference in 2003. These negotiating positions are the common point of reference both for countries that are least capable of participating meaningfully in complex multilateral negotiations and for those with sufficient negotiating capacity. Some common positions emerged from consensus amongst only a few major African states, which they then took to the rest of the member states, both informally through ambassadors or teams of ambassadors and formally through the Permanent Representative Council (PRC) and the Council of Ministers in the African Union. Thus, a position held by a few, usually regional powers, is expanded into a continental position through a process of formal and informal consultations. The common position on the genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in agriculture emerged out of concerns in Southern Africa about the impact of biotechnology on their agricultural exports to the EU, which requires a strict distinction between organic and genetically modified food products, at the time when the region suffered a series of food crises from 2003 to 2005. Their concerns translated into a sceptical position that required the limiting of GMO content in food aid and imports, in complete contrast to the AU’s New Economic Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD)’s more pro-­GMO position (Zondi 2003). Other common positions are at the initiative of the intergovernmental organ­ isations, especially the secretariat of the AU, and suggest the emergence of supranational impulses on the part of the African Union. In such cases, the AU

Common positions in international negotiations   23 Commission takes the initiative and develops draft proposals for consultation with the PRC, which represents national state interests at the AU, and other stakeholders. Sometimes, as in the case of the African Common Position on External Debt of 1987, the secretariat develops the positions on the basis of insights it picks up from discussions by member states or by the broader set of stakeholders outside the AU and gets experts to refine initial ideas into concrete negotiating positions (African Union 2005b). In this case, after three years of public appeals by successive chairmen of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) for a conference to discuss ways of overcoming Africa’s external debt, the secretariat initiated the process of developing draft common positions, in order to take the matter to negotiating tables at the UN, the G77 and the Non-­ Aligned Movement. In doing this, it enlisted the support of the Economic Commission for Africa and the African Development Bank (OAU 1987). The growing use of common positions suggests an emergence of common interests produced through a complex process of intra-­African negotiations at the African Union, where divergent and often conflicting national interests are harmonised into an all-­embracing framework for concerted participation in international negotiations. Through the process, AU member states realise the benefits for them in having their shared concerns and interests concretised in formal negotiating positions. In the African cases, in particular, it seems that awareness of the constraints of being small powers in a world system dominated by major global powers allows regional African powers, like Nigeria and South Africa, to moderate their competing geopolitical interests in the hope of a common good. In such cases, by limiting competing interests, African countries emerge with a common focus (Alderson and Hurrell 2000). In this way, African countries have been pragmatic, in the sense that, in spite of a multiplicity of divergent interests, they have displayed a ‘common interest in common interests’, to use Robert Ayson’s (2008: 53–54) phrase. Common positions have become the main means by which Africa has given meaning to its actorness and activism in multilateral negotiations that have become increasingly ever more complex. Multilateral negotiations, especially since the birth of the UN after the Second World War, are used for two main purposes, namely: to conduct regular diplomatic business and to establish and maintain the international regime of rules, norms, principles and decision-­ making procedures around which actor expectations converge (Krasner 1983: 1). Africa sees, in these opportunities to create an international environment in which African solutions to African problems could be realised, the setting of an international climate conducive for its activism (Konare 2006). It understands that this would only be realised if the 54 African countries act together as a coordinated single actor in the negotiation processes. This has been encouraged by the growing role of coalitions, alliances and regional groupings in negotiations, which have created opportunities for developing countries to influence international decision-­making (Kim 2007; Heine 2006). The two most important common positions that have been adopted so far are chosen as case studies, namely the Ezulwini Consensus on the UN Reform of

24   S. Zondi 2005 and the 2009 Common Position of the Committee of African Heads of State/Government on Climate Change. They were chosen because they are the most prominent, having been used in two of the biggest and trickiest negotiation platforms. Both relate to protracted negotiations that have not yet ended and because information on these protracted processes is relatively accessible, the two common positions offer the best opportunity to analyse common positions over a period of time in which conditions in the negotiations environment have changed. In this sense, we have a chance of assessing how the practice evolves as conditions change. The case studies are assessed for insights into Africa’s actorness and activism in changing international diplomacy. Through these case studies, we also seek to understand the factors that continue to constrain Africa’s collective agency.

The African common position on UN reform The common position can be traced back to the need for the African Group to respond to discussions of the Open-­Ended Working Group established by the UN General Assembly in 1992 to consider and submit proposals on the expansion of the UN Security Council (UN General Assembly 2004). The African Group shared the perspective of the Non-­Aligned Movement in favour of the expansion of Security Council membership and improvement of working methods. After five years of intensive discussions, the Group released a set of proposals commonly known as the Razali Plan (named after the Malaysian ambassador, Razali Ismail, who, as the president of the Assembly, guided the process at the time). The plan released in 1997 proposed the enlargement of the Council on the basis of two options: the first proposed six new permanent seats without veto power and three new non-­permanent seats and the second proposed a new category of eight four-­ year renewable-­term seats (as opposed to the current practice of non-­renewal non-­ permanent seats), which would rotate among developing countries selected according to agreed criteria (UN General Assembly 2005). The Razali Plan did not meet Africa’s expectations, because it ruled out an annulment or increase in vetoes and was thus seen as pandering to the narrow interests of permanent seat holders. Echoing the Non-­Aligned Movement position adopted at its Jakarta and New Delhi summits in 1992 and 1997 respectively, the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) at its summit in Harare, Zimbabwe, held during June 1997 spelt out in detail its basic demands as a new formal brief for African Group negotiators, as follows: • •

It demanded an increase of the number of seats (both permanent and non-­ permanent) from 15 to 26, in which Africa would be allocated at least two permanent seats chosen by Africa on a rotational basis. It demanded no less than five non-­permanent positions and demanded that the new members should enjoy the same privileges and powers as current members, but new members must be nominated by their respective regions and supported by General Assembly vote.

Common positions in international negotiations   25 • •

It demanded the strengthening of transparency of the Council’s work and that its decisions should be subject to general agreement by all regions. It demanded that the right of veto should be gradually curtailed until it is completely removed.

In 2005, the publication of a report by the then-­UN Secretary-­General, Kofi Annan, titled In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights For All, gave UN reform a new impetus. It established a strong case for far-­reaching reform, at least in order to enable the UN to respond to new world realities and the transnational challenges of cross-­border conflict, terrorism, transnational crime, poverty and disease epidemics. This also re-­energised Africa’s commitment to a new world – an opportunity to imagine a world order beyond the one proclaimed by Winston Churchill (1951: 382) as the rightful rule of the rich, which, in this case, also meant the West. In response, sometime towards the end of 2004, the AU established a process of internal consultations to firm up its negotiating position on the basis of proposals contained in the UN reports. It established a committee of 15 states for this purpose. The committee concluded its work with the adoption of a draft position at Ezulwini in Swaziland. This was adopted as an official African position at the AU Extraordinary Summit in Addis Ababa in March 2005, thus inaugurating what became known as the ‘Ezulwini Consensus’ on UN reform. The report endorsed the UN high-­level panel’s report on the growth of transnational problems. But it went further, arguing that what was needed was a deconstruction of the global hierarchy of political power formalised at the formation of the UN in 1945 and during its first reforms in 1963, when Africa and other former colonial territories were marginalised. For this reason, the common position argued that the challenges and realities necessitated a comprehensive transformation of the UN through the equitable distribution of decision-­making power. It saw the Harare position – whereby the number of veto-­wielding seats would be increased, including two for Africa, and with Africa receiving five non-­veto seats – as key. It wanted the principle of responsibility to protect to be subject to respect for international law, the sovereignty of states and legality of force. It supported the idea of an improved interface between the Council and the General Assembly, the strengthening of the Human Rights Commission and the establishment of a Peace-­Building Commission (African Union 2005a). The co-­existence between faith in the UN as a centrepiece of multilateralism and international society and a view of it as a product of a colonial/neocolonial making of a global order that orientalised Africa was a common refrain in country inputs over the months that led to the Ezulwini Consensus. The UN is seen as an absolute necessity. It helped prevent global wars by keeping what Nigeria’s former president, Olusegun Obasanjo, called the balance of terror between superpowers, but failed to reconfigure its power hierarchy in recognition of the decolonisation of the periphery, thus helping give structure to a form of neocolonialism (Obasanjo 1993: 34). In a stroke of irony, immanent in the outlook described above, while African countries saw the very idea of a veto as

26   S. Zondi inherently unjust and irrational, in their moral and rational argument for redeeming Africa from its marginality, they argued for Africa’s inclusion amongst veto-­ wielding seats in a reformed Security Council. There is no room to unpack this in this chapter, save to say that a touch of pragmatism in Africa’s negotiating approach placed it in a position where there was a constant clash between an idealistic position on reform and the realpolitik of negotiations between the unequal. Yet within this ambiguity, African countries found a point of convergence between views that were for a completely new UN without vetoes, but run by a regionally representative council of rotating members and those who would settle for the inclusion of Africa as non-­permanent members, amongst other diverse views. The notion of UN reform for Africa meant the democratisation of the world’s most important international organisation, which they also regarded as an important source of convergence of views amongst countries that held different views on global governance, in general, and UN reform, in particular (Arkhurst 2010). It was at the Tunis Summit of the OAU in 1994 that Africa first found consensus on the need to democratise the UNSC. The stated goal for Africa was to make the UN representative by expanding its composition on the basis of the principles of equitable regional representation and collective responsibility for maintaining world peace (African Union 1994). The third source of collective agency on UN reform is a conscious quest for agency in UN reform debates, in order to correct for their absence in previous reform phases when only a few countries were independent states and full UN members. This is a desire to play an active part in fashioning a new order of things. During the UN General Assembly debate in 2005, the delegation of Egypt described this as Africa’s wish to contribute, which Algeria called ‘a determination to participate’ or what South Africa called ‘an aspiration to engage other regions of the world on the future of the UN’ and what Nigeria called ‘the determination of Africa to rectify its present position as the only region without representation on the Security Council in the permanent membership category’ (UN General Assembly 2005). Thus, the collective agency was inextricably linked to Africa’s quest for citizenship in a world seen as different from one that could only place the continent on the periphery of the international community. This is the reason why African leaders constantly projected the African position as their collective expression of sovereignty (Mbeki 2006). It is common knowledge that the UN reform negotiations that were supposed to culminate in some groundbreaking decision in September 2006 came to naught. There were three broad positions for reform that were not reconciled: a broad global south position in favour of the expansion of both permanent and non-­permanent seats in the Council on the basis of regional representation; a position of a group of major middle powers – Brazil, India, Japan and Germany (G4) – which called for permanent seats for each of them, plus two African countries; and a Uniting for Consensus group composed of regional powers from most continents who were opposed to the aspirations of G4 states to permanent seats, but called for the representation of most regional powers. The powerful

Common positions in international negotiations   27 permanent five frustrated all attempts at consensus on reform fearing that it would lead to a loss of privilege and power. They also sought to divide the global south powers interested in Council seats by picking different individual countries for possible seats. For instance, the US picked India and Japan, the UK and France favoured Brazil, India and Japan, Russia vouched for India, and China supported stronger developing country representation (Ariyoruk 2005). Under these conditions, there has been very little room for a comprehensive consensus on Security Council reform. Africa’s was one of the most inflexible negotiating positions and helped to collapse the negotiation process. The collapse of discussions between the AU and the G4 over Africa’s insistence that new members be selected on a regional basis, while the G4 wanted agreement on individual members, is blamed on Africa (Adebajo 2008: 19–45). Realising that the Ezulwini demands could lead to a stalemate, the AU set up a Follow-­up Mechanism on the Reform of the United Nations, comprising 13 members representing all five AU regions, in order to enable flexibility on the part of African negotiators ‘to negotiate with other regions of the world and stakeholders . . . bearing in mind the necessity for reciprocal support from other interested groups’ (African Union 2005a). The AU Commission mandated to provide support. However, the negotiators soon found that there was no time or space for them to seek new political mandates as negotiations in New York came to a stalemate. Some of the bigger African powers showed a willingness to quietly compromise and thus deviate from specific prescriptions of the Ezulwini Consensus, and the rest of the countries involved made such deviation appear quite impolitic. Notwithstanding the difficulties that negotiations have faced, the Ezulwini Consensus remains the official common position, even though many African states are exploring beyond its confines in the Open-­Ended Working Group, where UN reform is being discussed.1 For instance, some African countries are amenable to the idea of semi-­permanent seats for terms of ten to fifteen years, even though, in public, they are bound by the common position. Some countries have been influenced by major powers to tone down equity and justice demands in favour of ‘pragmatism’, thus their positions are no longer certain, because they have become silent. The negotiations with the G4 caused a rift within the African Group, because it forced the big contenders for permanent seats – namely South Africa and Nigeria – to take cautious positions.2 Discussions around the G4 proposal forced countries to name African countries to be put forward, where the African common position left the choice to a summit of the African Union and a rotational selection system. This encouraged rivalry amongst African regional powers and soured bilateral relations. This culminated in diplomatic fracas in March 2012 when a group of 125 Nigerian travellers were refused entry into South Africa by custom officials over yellow fever vaccination cards, and Nigeria retaliated by blocking the entry of South African travellers.

28   S. Zondi

The climate change negotiations experience On climate change negotiations, Africa negotiated without a firm common position and collective effort from 1992 to 2006. It was only in 2009 that a formal common negotiating position emerged. Reasons for this include the realisation that African countries have common interests that guide their participation in complex climate change negotiations and that it is better for them to negotiate on the basis of a common framework. It was an outcome of a growing need on the part of Africa to become a distinct actor promoting the common interests of African countries. Climate change presented serious common challenges for African countries; chief amongst them being the devastating effects on the weather-­dependent agricultural sector, the depletion of fishing resources, floods in the absence of bulk water infrastructure, worsened droughts and so forth. The costs of mitigating and adapting livelihoods to this change were always going to be excessively high in Africa. Therefore, for all African countries, climate change negotiations were about justice and equitable solutions (Hoste 2010). This is why principles of equity and justice were frequently put forward in defence of the common position. On substance, the demand has generally been an ambitious and legally binding deal, which protects the development aspirations of the continent. In the run-­up to the Fifteenth Conference of Parties (CoP 15) of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change that was held in Copenhagen in December 2009, the African Committee of Heads of State and Government directed ministers of environmental affairs to identify the convergence of views amongst African governments on climate change negotiations, in order to develop a common negotiating framework. Indeed, they also built on African views that crystallised ahead of CoP 12, which was held for the first time on African soil in Nairobi, Kenya, in 2006. This included the linking of climate change to the transformation of the global power hierarchy, improving Africa’s share of global development budgets, addressing African development challenges, a balance between mitigation and adaptation focuses and supporting the operationalisation of the Kyoto Protocol as an embodiment of the 1992 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, which was adopted by over 190 countries. The AU convened a Working Group comprising independent African experts, experts from relevant UN agencies and officials from the Economic Commission for Africa.3 This laid the basis for what became an African approach to the climate change question. This related both to what Africa would demand at the negotiation table and what it would put forward as its own initiative (Mkandla 2007). Thus, the following points became key ingredients of the African Group’s approach to CoP 12: • •

the UNFCCC is the legitimate platform, and the Kyoto Protocol is the preferred legal framework; a commitment to substantial, concrete and observable reductions of carbon emissions by industrialised countries;

Common positions in international negotiations   29 • • • • • • •

the building of the human and technological capacity of African countries to mitigate and adapt to climate change; a firm international agreement on the establishment of an Adaptation Fund governed on the basis of the principle ‘one country one vote’; a Special Climate Change Fund and the Least Developed Countries Fund finance Africa’s climate change responses; a formula for the allocation of the Global Energy Efficiency and Renewable Fund’s resources based on a vulnerability index; an increase in Africa’s access to the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) projects; an agreement on technological transfer mechanisms linked to the implementation of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs); enhanced education, training and awareness creation targeting citizens in vulnerable countries. (UNEP 2006)

The fact that Africa hosted the 2006 Conference and that its outcomes showed some alignment with Africa’s demands explains Africa’s satisfaction at the end of CoP 12. Of course, this outcome had to do with the fact that Africa’s position coincided with that of least developed countries, small states and island states, making it a majority decision. CoP 12 reached consensus on the prioritisation of adaptation, increased funding for energy efficiency efforts, targeted capacity building initiatives and partnership between the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to help Africa access Clean Development projects (New Nation 2006). In the run-­up to the CoP  15 in Copenhagen in November–December 2009, the African Committee of Heads of State and Government reviewed the situation and produced a formal common position and, for the first time, a single negotiating team under the leadership of the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, the late Meles Zenawi. This position had been outlined by the AU Summit in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, in February 2009 – a position guided by the recognition of an economic history that weakened former colonies and the guiding principle of ‘common, but differentiated responsibility’ (African Union 2009: 1). They worked towards a commitment to substantial and predictable funding and making technologies and technical capacity available to support the adaptation efforts of developing and poor countries. They envisaged agreement on concrete steps and set clear targets on how rich countries would modify consumption and production patterns in order to substantially reduce carbon emissions. They also wanted the removal of all barriers to developing countries’ access to resources and technologies for adaptation measures (Hoste 2010). Africa also recommended a distinction between measures for urgent action and phased in medium and long-­term ones. It called for an institutional framework to deepen adaptation through the mobilisation of resources and capacity building. It called for new and substantial public funding commitments (no less than 2.5 per cent of a developed country’s GDP) to support country adaptation

30   S. Zondi programmes throughout the world. Worried about the after effects of accelerated adaptation measures, Africa called for a new international mechanism to address both the risks and compensation incurred by developing countries as a result of climate change (African Union 2009). The Copenhagen Conference almost collapsed over divisions principally between China and the US; between the global south represented by the G77 and the developed countries; and between emerging south countries and smaller developing countries, who wanted emerging economies to accept relatively high targets on carbon emissions (Vidal and Goldenberg 2009). The negotiations were saved by the initiative of major developing countries (Brazil, India and South Africa) individually and collectively starting direct negotiations with the big emitters – the US and China – to find a compromise deal that would keep negotiations going until a binding agreement was found (Masters 2010: 2). This led to the emergence of a new informal negotiation group, BASIC (Brazil, South Africa, India and China), to act as a catalyst for building diplomatic bridges between the positions of the developing and developed countries, which had become dangerously fixed. These talks resulted in a non-­binding political agreement called the Copenhagen Accord, which noted a number of contentious issues for further negotiation. These included emission reduction targets for industrialised countries; the recording of emission actions by developing countries (including countries like Brazil, China, India, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and South Korea, who all agreed to submit such information); funding for measurement, reporting and verif­ication of emission reduction; and a technology development and transfer mechanism. Principally, the Accord was an agreement about how to move towards some agreement (Sonjica 2010). In the context of deep divisions on the principle of common, but differentiated responsibilities that Africa and the global south insisted on, African countries, like Sudan and Senegal, apparently criticised South Africa’s participation in the BASIC initiative as a betrayal of the common position. They saw this as an irresponsible abandonment of a common front, including G77 countries and a self-­interested pragmatism.4 It was reported in the media that Ethiopia was particularly affronted by being rendered redundant as the official leader of the African Group, because it was not invited into BASIC. There have also been differences amongst BASIC member states, with China and India seeing the platform as a blocking device, rather than as a forum to developing enlightened common negotiating positions (Masters 2012). BASIC was, for all intents and purposes, a pragmatic response to an impending failure of negotiations – an attempt to salvage a political agreement that would keep negotiations going towards a legally binding agreement after Copenhagen. It seems that South Africa could have done better in taking the African Group (and its chair, especially) into confidence about its manoeuvres. This is because South Africa is the only country in BASIC that sees itself as representing a group or region. It should not have assumed that there is a convergence of views between BASIC and the African position.

Common positions in international negotiations   31

The practicalities of negotiating common positions: general observations Power hierarchies at the global level and within the continent have made it very difficult for African countries to steadfastly maintain their common positions in international negotiations. The overbearing influence of powerful countries and their ability to sidestep the positions of weaker countries, even if they are sound and backed up by a number of countries, means that Africa cannot just count on the power of their numbers. It has to find ways of drawing concessions from powerful states, either through able chairs of the African Group or through individual member states that are able to do so. Africa is yet to accept the fact that its regional powers have the capacity to speak on behalf of the rest where Africa’s interests are best served by an individual actor committed to the common good. This is partly because countries do not fully trust that regional powers like South Africa would not use such opportunities to further their own narrow interests. Second, the AU has not yet evolved into a supranational structure that can truly represent the continent without suspicion about national interests. The AU Commission is yet to develop sufficient institutional and human resource capacity to negotiate on behalf of African countries. It has not been given the authority to do more than just facilitate the development of common positions ahead of major negotiations. This is the artefact of failure by AU member states to cede any element of their sovereignty to the AU Commission. A key challenge for Africa’s agency in international relations is therefore related to entrenched post-­ Westphalian concepts of statehood and national sovereignty that have encumbered the development of supranational outlook in the African Union. Cleavages within the continent are many and entrenched, due to a history of colonial rule and instability. Differences to do with the geopolitics of regionalism, with regional economic organisations firming up their own distinct identities, act to complicate members’ attachment to common continental positions. Although there are five geographical regions, there are eight recognised regional intergovernmental organisations, and each has its own demands on member states for collective identity and action. Then there are geolinguistic regions, comprising mainly Francophone, Anglophone, Lusophone and Swahili areas; these group identities add to the complication of pan-­African identity. This is because although regional identities or formations are well-­known, none of the regional configurations play any particular role in the making and management of common positions. The five regional economic communities that the AU considers to be building blocks for continental unity do not even have a formal role in this, either. The Protocol on Relations between Regional Economic Communities and the AU, which was meant to formally establish an organic link between the two levels of integration, remains under discussion since the Ouagadougou Conference of African Ministers of Integration in March 2006. The draft Protocol makes provision for regional organisations to make proposals on policy issues through the AU’s Specialised Technical Committee of ambassadors.

32   S. Zondi The very idea of coordination of Africa’s external relations is undermined by the lack of an agreed framework for harmonising the divergent foreign policy goals and international ambitions of individual African countries. There is no common African foreign policy to provide the contours of common negotiating positions. Even the Draft Protocol on Relations between the African Union and Regional Economic Communities only points out that regional organisations should ensure that their international engagements are in harmony with continental efforts. This explains the tendency to rigidly stick to common positions in the absence of any other guiding framework. In this way, Africa appears unreas­ onable and inflexible. The common African positions face a flexibility dilemma in two ways. The first relates to the reluctance amongst states to seek compromises. The second is the inability of negotiating teams to make meaningful concessions where they are expressly allowed, because member states hog the power to make decisions, leaving negotiators somewhat hamstrung. Differences between states that embrace pragmatic adjustment in common positions and those that see these positions as zero-­sum games frequently surface, as in regards to South Africa and Nigeria versus other African states on UN reform, as well as South Africa’s seeming break with the collective at climate change talks in Copenhagen. Real decision-­making in AU affairs remains the preserve of national capitals; they often want to micromanage the AU Commission, leaving the Commission unable to react to intransigence on the part of individual countries, thus limiting its ability to champion enlightened common interests. While flexibility is increasingly built into common positions, negotiators are loath to venture into concessions where member states might demand their right to be consulted or to decide. Common positions have benefited from the willingness of major African states or leaders to champion them by managing the complexity between national capitals and AU headquarters, as well as using their own diplomatic capital to reach out to other UN regions. The willingness of Kenya, Ethiopia and South Africa to lobby internally and internationally was crucial to mobilising around the common position on climate change. Similarly, Egypt, Nigeria and South Africa have energetically promoted the common position on UN reform in both their bilateral engagements with other countries and during multilateral negoti­ ations. Political pressures can make or break multilateral negotiations, and a political champion (or several champions) is, therefore, important (Borrie and Randin 2005). Championing states provide necessary human and technical resources to ‘get others to say yes’ to the common position – a complex and highly technical process at times. The challenge for Africa is that only a few states possess these qualities and the will to champion. In Copenhagen, Ethiopia led the African position, but it invested very little beyond political will and reputation in this, while South Africa used its political clout to get Africa represented in BASIC, though it was not mandated to lead the African Group.

Common positions in international negotiations   33

Conclusion While Africa has responded enthusiastically to opportunities for agency in complex multilateral negotiations by adopting carefully negotiated common positions, internal continental dynamics and external factors tend to weaken these positions. Perceptions arise that these positions are inflexible, rigid and unrealistic, because of a shared sense of historical injustice amongst African countries and, therefore, an expectation that negotiations would redeem Africa’s lost dignity and resources. As this chapter has shown, the agency of the collective of African states is a relatively new and developing trend. It offers Africa opportunities to use the number of its states in the UN system to its advantage. As many UN regions look to Africa to legitimise their position, the continent’s international activism and agency will grow and become more sophisticated, requiring complex diplomatic skills, integrated foreign policy architecture, an internal consensus on shared values and a greater sense of common interests. All of this is also contingent upon reforms to global governance towards an undoing of global power asymmetry that make this a neocolonised world order.

Notes 1 Personal communication with AU Officials, 16 November 2011, Addis Ababa. 2 Personal communication with an official of the Peace and Security Council of the AU, 14 November 2011. 3 Personal communication with AU Commission, 14 November 2011. 4 Ibid.

3 African agency in global trade governance Donna Lee

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is one of the key multilateral arenas for African agency.1 Throughout the Doha Development Agenda (DDA) negoti­ ations of the last decade or so, African countries have been politically active and, as a result, prominent players in the multilateral discussions around proposed new trade rules for the twenty-­first century global economy. In this chapter, I highlight the contours of African agency in the WTO and the role that African delegations have played as key protagonists in the DDA talks. I take agency to mean the ability to change the processes of global trade governance and the rules governing world trade. Using a constructivist approach, I concentrate on the role of discourse, as well as the various capacity enhancing strategies employed by African members states, so that they are better able to influence the DDA negoti­ ations. I argue that the relationship between the political action of Africans and their strategic context (the DDA) is mutually constitutive.2 Consequently, the strategic action of African negotiators is formulated by, and also impacts on, the negotiating and decision-­making processes within the WTO. In the case study which follows, the relational interaction of African agency and the DDA negoti­ ations produces deadlock, while also constituting Africans as influential in the WTO. By 2012, after more than a decade of on-­and-off talks between the WTO member states, the DDA negotiations were deadlocked. Analysis of the deadlock tends to focus on the spoiling impact of the so-­called ‘rising powers’ Brazil, India and China (Hurrell and Narlikar 2006; Narlikar 2010; Stephen 2012). This chapter, however, adds to the mounting body of work focusing on the spoiling influence of least developed countries and highlights their role as increasingly significant participants in the WTO negotiating processes (Jensen and Gibbon 2007; Lee 2009; Lee and Smith 2008; Mshomba 2009). In particular, this chapter explores how African states, concerned at the increasingly unequal distribution of the benefits of market opening, can shape the processes and outcomes of global trade governance and, in so doing, compose themselves as influential. My analysis of African agency highlights their imitative use of discourse in global trade governance as a means of influencing the negotiations in general and defying dominant players, such as the United States of America (USA), in the WTO, in particular.

African agency in global trade governance   35 Constructivist approaches remind us of the crucial role discourses can play in international relations, although they tend to suppose that prevailing discourses serve dominant state purposes only.3 Wilkinson (2009), for example, discusses the role of discourse in the WTO as a tool of the dominant powers and non-­state elites within the global trade system, in order to illustrate the social processes at work in securing top-­down asymmetrical agreements in global trade. In this chapter, however, I invert the predominant method used by others, exploring the role of discourse in the study of international relations. Rather than seeing dominant discourses as the exclusive weapons of the strong, I highlight their potential as ‘weapons of the weak’.4 My purpose is to explore how subordinate African actors have made normative use of the discourse of the dominant states (in this case, a discourse of development) in the WTO as a means of challenging and resisting the power of the USA and other major states. In this case study, weak African actors (in a structural sense) use the development discourse embedded in the DDA to hold powerful states accountable for their trade behaviour. I develop this approach to the role of discourse in global governance from earlier work by Sharman (2007) on peripheral states in the system of tax havens. In this fascinating study of the conflict between microstates, such as the Bahamas and Liechtenstein, and powerful players, such as the European Union (EU) over attempts by the latter to impose new regulatory measures in tax and banking, Sharman demonstrates how these small tax havens accented the powerful states’ own neoliberal discourse of the value of market competition in the conflict in what he calls a ‘mimetic challenge’ (2007: 48). The tax haven states were able to expose the contradiction between attempts by the EU and others to introduce new regulatory measures in banking and taxation, while at the same time front­ ing free market discourses in multilateral forums such as the WTO, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF ). Using a ‘mimetic challenge’, tiny tax havens – some of which were aid dependent on the very countries that they were resisting – were able to defy powerful states by re-­communicating their own well-­established neoliberal principles, in order to challenge the very idea of market regulation. Deploying this ‘mimetic challenge’ approach – where states imitate the dis­ course of others – in this chapter, I highlight the ways in which African states are able to make use of the prevailing discourse of development in the DDA – a discourse initiated and advanced by the major states when launching the Round – to resist a multilateral trade agreement that falls short of their expectations of what is promised in the development discourse. Thus, imitating the dominant discourse of development becomes a source of subordinate state resistance in the DDA and a key factor explaining the delay and deadlock in the negoti­ations. Consequently, while states such as Kenya, Burkina Faso, Uganda and Egypt lack market power in the international system, they make up for this material subordination by using discursive power in their attempts to defy dominant states in the WTO. Here, then, is the essence of the strategic relation­ ship between African political action and the discursive context of the DDA.

36   D. Lee African agency is formulated by and, at the same time, impacts on the prevail­ ing development discourse and the negotiating context in which it is communicated. The DDA was launched in November 2001 to explicitly address the needs of developing countries, and, throughout the negotiations, African states have insisted that major powers deliver on this public commitment to development. When development issues have been sidelined in, for example, the non-­ agricultural market access (NAMA) negotiations or by European and Japanese attempts early on in the negotiations to place the so-­called ‘Singapore issues’5 onto the agenda, African states, along with other developing and least developed countries, vetoed agreement.6 I provide new qualitative evidence to support the argument that the resistance was triggered and aided by their strategic relation­ ship to discursive factors. This evidence includes WTO documentation, as well as private qualitative data from a series of interviews with African missions in Geneva and Brussels and with non-­state actors based in Geneva who work with and support African WTO member states. These include the South Centre and the International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development (ICTSD), as well as officials from the WTO, the African Union and the United Nations Con­ ference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD).7 My purpose is to demonstrate dynamic African agency in the WTO and suggest that it is a significant – though certainly not sole – factor in the continuing delay and frequent deadlock in the Doha Round. I limit my analysis to an explanation of why Africans have become participants in the WTO system and the impact they have had on the negotiating processes in the last decade. It is too premature to examine the relationship between African political action and shifts in trade policy and rule changes until we know the details of the endgame. The chapter is organised as follows. I begin by discussing the DDA deadlock, especially in relation to the role of African agency. I then highlight evidence of growing African agency in the DDA, focusing on the factors which explain the emergence and development of an enhanced willingness and capacity of some African states to engage with, and impact upon, current global trade governance processes in the WTO. Having highlighted African agency as a key element of the current DDA talks and reason why the talks are in stalemate, I then briefly discuss how this leads to what Sharman (2007: 52) calls ‘institutional Darwin­ ism’ in global governance. That is, competition between various forms of trade governance – bilateralism, regionalism and multilateralism – with the prospect that only the fittest (read: most effective) will survive. My concluding remarks draw attention to the mutually constitutive relationship between African agency and the strategic context of the DDA.

Deadlock in the DDA It is not possible, in what is a brief chapter, to provide a detailed account of the course of the negotiations and a blow-­by-blow narrative on the occasions when the talks have stalled. Instead, I simply highlight that most high-­level meetings

African agency in global trade governance   37 of the Doha talks have ended without consensus on the most contentious issues, and, as a result, a DDA agreement is far from completion. We should not under­ estimate the task in-­hand for WTO members to agree on new trade rules. The membership is large (over 150), and the trade and trade-­related issues under dis­ cussion are broad and contentious; members have been trying to reach a multi­ lateral agreement to create a market opening for agricultural and manufacturing goods, trade in services (GATS), and trade-­related aspects of intellectual prop­ erty. It is not an exaggeration to say that the Doha Round has mostly been in deadlock over the last decade and that it has been marred by a series of failed WTO ministerial meetings, some very spectacular, such as the so-­called ‘Col­ lapse of Cancun’ in 2003.8 And while some high-­level meetings produced some progress, for example, the December 2005 Hong Kong ministerial, they were quickly followed by an impasse in the negotiating committees in Geneva, as del­ egates sought to unpack the details of the Hong Kong Declaration on ending agricultural subsidies by 2013.9 The negotiations following the Hong Kong meeting proved hugely difficult, and it was not long before further deadlock in the talks, mainly over agricultural subsidies, marred the July 2006 Geneva min­ isterial meeting. Immediately after this failed ministerial, the WTO Director General, Pascal Lamy, suspended the talks. A further high-­level meeting in Potsdam in June 2007 also ended in deadlock, with the issue of developed country agricultural subsidies again proving the main sticking point. Although Doha meetings resumed again in Geneva in July 2008 (as a result of discussions among elite nations at the 2007 meeting of the World Economic Forum), these talks lasted only nine days and eventually collapsed, due to a failure to achieve agreement on the perennial issue of developed country agricultural subsidies, as well as conflict over special safeguard measures.10 A subsequent ministerial meeting in Geneva in December 2009 once again failed, as least developed countries continued to insist on meaningful development content to a DDA agreement.11 In more recent meetings, the USA has continued to demand more market access to developing countries, while developing countries have responded that the USA should offer more in special safeguards in agricultural trade to protect their poor farmers. The north–south stand-­off in the DDA continues (The Hindu 2011). The Doha Ministerial Declaration makes explicit mention of the need to give special consideration to the needs of developing countries (WTO 2001). Yet, as Scott and Wilkinson argue, the ‘development content of the Round has been whittled away over the course of the negotiations’ (2010: 12) Given the resistance of developing and least developed countries to an agreement without significant development content – the ‘mimetic challenge’ – there seems little prospect of an endgame to the Round as it enters its second decade of negotiations.12 Certainly, the view often expressed by officials working in, and around, the WTO in Geneva, when asked about the likelihood of the completion of Doha, is a pessimistic one. Many of the mission staff and WTO officials interviewed in the summer of 2010 spoke repeatedly of their frustration with the negotiating

38   D. Lee process and the social impact of the continued failure of the DDA talks. Some described Geneva as something of a ghost town and lamented ‘there is nothing going on here’. Mission officials talked of trade delegates returning to capital cities to ‘renew their careers’ and ‘find more significant trade policy work’. WTO officials talked about the need to move on to work in other organisations ‘where there was more happening’.13 Not that the WTO as an institution can do much about the current deadlock. As a member-­driven institution with a relat­ ively small secretariat, it lacks the political and administrative means to compel the member states to complete the Round. Instead, it is reduced to repeated appeals by the Director General for re-­engagement and renewed political will from member states.14 When asked about the causes of the impasse, African officials, not surpris­ ingly, repeatedly talked of the need for major states to ‘deliver on their develop­ ment promises’ in the DDA negotiations.15 This sense of expectation of – even entitlement to – development is also evident in many formal submissions to the WTO by African states and the Africa Group. In 2006, for example, following the release of the Draft Ministerial Text (more commonly referred to as the ‘Derbez Text’) at the Cancun ministerial meeting in September 2003,16 the Kenyan delegation to the WTO Committee on Trade and Development submit­ ted a detailed critique of the proposals outlined in the Text on behalf of the Africa Group. It concluded that: The proposed decisions will not confer any economic benefits on develop­ ing countries, much less facilitate their integration into the multilateral trading system. They are framed in language which would not oblige developed countries to take positive measures to increase market access opportunities for developing countries. (WTO 2006a: 25) Some of the interviewed African officials working in Geneva repeatedly stated their reluctance to complete the Round without significant development commitments. One official said: We are not unreasonable negotiators. All we have been insisting on in the committees is that others keep to the development agenda we all agreed to when we launched the new Round in 2001. Even when commitments on issues related to our development are agreed during the negotiations, they get forgotten later on.17 Formal communiqués submitted to the WTO by the Africa Group during the negotiations support these views. For example, in 2006, the Africa Group issued a communiqué to a special session of the WTO Committee on Agriculture quoting paragraph 55 of the Hong Kong Ministerial Declaration, which makes an explicit commitment that members address the particular trade-­related con­ cerns of developing and least developed countries related to commodities in the

African agency in global trade governance   39 course of the agriculture and NAMA negotiations (WTO 2006b). A common theme of the interviews was that African officials believed that developing coun­ tries had a ‘legitimate right’ to expect a Doha agreement to deliver development; ‘why call it a development round otherwise?’ one official asked.18 Clearly, African hopes were raised by the language and norms of development written into the Doha Declaration. They imitated this language of development in the negotiations.

Africa in global trade governance We have learnt to ask why, we have learnt to ask how, and we have learnt to say ‘No’. (Interview with an African delegate to the WTO in Geneva, June 2010) Traditionally, African states, when considered, are seen as a problem to be addressed by global economic governance, that is, they are perceived as objects in global governance. In this objectification, they receive global economic gov­ ernance and global economic policies and processes, rather than shaping them. In sum, they have no agency; there is no African strategic action. This is particu­ larly the case with small African states whose less-­developed economies leave them with scant market power, and it is assumed, therefore, that they are unable to impact a decision-­making environment like the WTO, where large market power is seen to determine outcomes in negotiations. Prevailing conceptualisa­ tions of global governance see African and other least developed countries as marginal actors in global economic governance regimes, such as the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank, the Group of Twenty Finance Ministers and the World Economic Forum (for example, see Grynberg 2006). Indeed, the experience of most African countries as they engage with these institutions is one of economic dependence and political marginalisation. In the case of the WTO, however, African engagement is now direct and central to the current Doha Round of negotiations (Lee 2009; Jensen and Gibbon 2007). Before the establishment of the WTO, African countries enjoyed very little, if any, influence in multilateral trade governance. Although most African countries were members of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT),19 histo­ ries of the eight multilateral trade rounds conducted during the GATT period (1948–1995) indicate that African members states were largely absent from these negotiations. Recent analysis of developing countries in the GATT high­ lights the active involvement of India, Cuba, Chile, South Africa and Brazil, but they find little evidence of least developed African strategic political action (Wilkinson and Scott 2008). In contrast to their passivity in the GATT, African countries have become active in the WTO. There is much evidence of this: the large number of proposals submitted by African states and the Africa Group (Senona 2005), the appointment of African delegates as Chairs of negotiating committees, the regular meetings of the Africa Group in Geneva and the leader­ ship of other coalition groups by African states (such as Mauritius’ position as

40   D. Lee coordinator of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Group and Zambia as coordinator of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group). How is it that African states have become more active in the WTO during the Doha Round negotiations? There are at least three reasons that explain this dynamic agency. First is the opportunity created by the discursive turn which prioritises – at least rhetorically – development and fairness discourses in the context of market opening objectives, which provide a weapon of resistance. Second is the opportunity created by the consensus-­based decision-­making process in the WTO, which provides a mechanism for resistance by enabling African states to say ‘no’ and thus block agreement. Third is the various ways in which the deliberative capacity of African states has been enhanced during the DDA, so that they are better able to ask why and how during the DDA process. This is most striking in the more developed states, such as Kenya and Egypt, but it also includes several least developed states, such as Burkina Faso and Rwanda, although many less-­developed states still have inadequate capacities to engage in WTO processes in any meaningful way. Development discourses and opportunities for dynamic African agency While least developed countries may lack market power due to the small size and scale of their economies, they have opportunities to exercise discursive power and defy leading states, such as the USA, as a result of a decisive discur­ sive turn in global economic governance at the beginning of the new century. This discursive turn placed development firmly at the top of the agenda of various global governance regimes. A series of events, beginning with the November 1999 WTO ministerial meeting in Seattle and including the United Nations Millennium Summit in September 2000 which adopted a set of develop­ ment goals, provided a very powerful development steer for the WTO that found its way into the Doha Ministerial Declaration in November 2001. Cumulatively, they created what Jensen and Gibbon call a ‘heightened role of moral argument’ (2007: 5). These developments heralded a collective global responsibility for development to reduce poverty in the least developed states of the world (Stiglitz and Charlton 2005). Developing countries, including African states, have been able to challenge the major powers in the WTO to deliver on development throughout the DDA negotiations on the basis of this collective steer on develop­ ment. The dominant discourse of development opened up opportunities for African states to say ‘no’ to any agreement that did not include meaningful development outcomes. This was seen particularly in the cotton negotiations, which quickly became an acid test of the commitment of Washington, in particular, to furnish develop­ ment to some of the poorest farming communities in West and Central Africa by reducing domestic subsidies to American farmers. Given the symbolism of the cotton issue in the DDA, the Africa Group has stated more than once that there will be no completion of the DDA without an agreement on cotton (Lee 2007).

African agency in global trade governance   41 Having signalled that the current Doha Round would place the needs of the developing countries at the centre of the work programme, the legitimacy of the WTO system of global governance, as well as the reputation of the powerful states that dominate the regime, now rests on a meaningful development outcome. Previously, the legitimacy of the global governance of trade rested on its remarkable success at reducing tariffs and generating growth in global trade (Lee 1997). Few contest the effectiveness of global trade governance in achiev­ ing this, but trade liberalisation as an end in itself is no longer sufficient (Lee and Smith 2010). Since the emergence of the discourse of development and its prev­ alence over the market opening discourse, the success of the WTO now rests on its ability to govern trade in a more equitable and fair way to create development for the poorest countries in the international system and thus reduce poverty among the poor communities in the world. The pervasiveness of a development discourse, with its normative appeals to fairness, has been a key factor in facilit­ ating the activism of least developed African countries during the DDA. Sharman (2007) notes how weak states can create strategies of resistance by imitating the language and rhetoric of the dominant states. The WTO development discourse provides opportunities for least developed states to defy the powerful states by using the language and vocabulary of fairness that they have directly introduced into the WTO. For example, the Marrakesh Agreement establishing the WTO in 1995 placed the development needs of the least developed states at the forefront of the new organisation. The development language in the Agreement was often quoted in the formal submissions by African states to the various negoti­ ating committees in the two months just before the suspension of the DDA negoti­ ations in July 2006.20 As discussed above, African officials use the language of development when talking about their expectations and experiences of the DDA. Consensus decision-­making and African activism It is customary in the WTO to make decisions by consensus, even though, in theory, a voting system is in place. This means that, in practice, weaker states can, if they are willing, veto multilateral agreement. Each formal WTO negoti­ ating body reaches agreement by unanimity and, as such, ‘no-­one’s objections can be ignored’ (Tijmes-­Lhl 2009: 420). Even though the practice of so-­called ‘Green Room’ meetings continues and is evidence of the importance of market power in the WTO,21 this is seen as ‘irrelevant if an elite negotiated and drafted the text as long as every member can express his consent or dissent regarding the draft’ (Tijmes-­Lhl 2009: 421). Non-­objection, however, is not the same as setting the agenda, and, while Africans have become more active in the WTO and successful in resisting the top-­down imposition of an agreement, they have also been frustrated in their attempts to get agreement on substantive policy changes in many areas, especially in the agriculture committee and sub-­ committees (Lee 2009; Lee and Smith 2010). It is important that, because of the existence of the consensus rule, African states can veto Green Room decisions. However, the continuing significance of

42   D. Lee the Green Room process means that specific policy interests of those not included cannot be placed on the DDA agenda without other forms of interven­ tion. Furthermore, any African absence in the formal negotiating committees (as opposed to the informal Green Room process that cannot claim legitimate decision-­making powers) counts as non-­objection to decisions. This is because of the way that the consensus rule is applied: member states have to be present at the negotiating committee meeting, council meeting or ministerial meeting to veto decisions. To take full advantage of the opportunities generated by the dis­ cursive turn of institutional processes, such as consensus decision-­making, and to develop engagement strategies beyond saying ‘no’, African states have had to enhance their deliberative capacities during the Doha Round. Only by ensuring that they can attend formal meetings and that those present have some technical expertise and knowledge of trade issues can such influence be developed. This operational challenge has been met by some, though by no means all, African states, and the development of the Africa Group coalition has been a major factor in the process of sharing limited resources to ensure an African presence in the WTO meeting rooms. Negotiating capacity building efforts and African activism African members’ more effective involvement in the Doha Round negotiations has been augmented as a result of a combination of capacity building factors, including increased advisory and technical support from the WTO and other international and regional organisations, such as UNCTAD, the African Union and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), non-­ governmental organisations, such as the ICTSD, Oxfam, the Advisory Centre in WTO Law (ACWL) and South Centre.22 Although some of the African Mission officials interviewed in Geneva in March and June of 2010 seemed wary of WTO support, the take-­up of WTO training programmes for African delegates is high, especially among the least developed countries. The Development Division of the WTO spends 30 per cent of its budget on training courses for African member states and also provides interns to African missions to enhance their capacity in Geneva, as well as a full-­time staff African Group coordinator, who organises meetings and retreats for African states.23 African states have been quite shrewd in exploiting the support offered by other trade-­related international and non-­governmental organisations based in Geneva. There are an extensive range of supportive organisations that share and champion the development goals of least developed countries, such as the South Centre and ICTSD, creating an extensive social and political network in Geneva to enhance the deliberative capacity of some of the most resource-­starved mis­ sions. It is important to recognise the way in which African states use this non-­ elite network to empower themselves in DDA negotiations. African officials in Geneva spoke of the practice of seeking technical information and intelligence from these organisations as a starting point. They also mentioned that they often seek advice on writing WTO submissions and proposals. One official claimed,

African agency in global trade governance   43 for example, that UNCTAD had assisted African states in drafting Africa Group proposals on agriculture and NAMA and that Oxfam had assisted African states in drafting Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) proposals.24 Non-­ governmental organisations (NGO) staff who work with African missions in Geneva claimed that the 2003 Cotton Initiative submitted by the so-­called Cotton Four (Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali) was authored by a leading member of staff from a partner NGO also based in Geneva. It is an open secret in Geneva that the ACWL writes African and other developing country proposals – largely because it has spare capacity, due to the limited engagement of developing coun­ tries in the dispute settlement mechanism.25 Not only have African states used these organisations to enhance their capa­ city, they have also made normative use of them in their discursive practices in negotiations. Oxfam, for example, is used by African states, according to some African delegates, in order to develop what they called the Crying Game strategy in the cotton negotiations. Oxfam’s detailed research into the relationship between USA cotton subsidies and poverty in African cotton farming com­ munities (Oxfam 2002) was a key document that informed the Cotton Initiative and helped the Cotton Four gain normative traction in the ensuing cotton negoti­ ations. Oxfam was also instrumental in influencing the publication of editorials in major US newspapers supporting African positions in the cotton negotiations (Lee and Smith 2010). African states have also helped themselves by developing means of collective coordination and the sharing of resources to enhance their capacity to engage in the DDA, most notably through the development of a so-­called ‘focal point’ system in both the Africa Group and the Least Developed Countries Group in the WTO.26 This involves a large number and wide range of African states, including Kenya, Nigeria, Morocco, Egypt, Burkina Faso, Lesotho, Zambia and Rwanda, who each take a lead in each of the negotiating committees and ensure that Africa has a presence and influence across the DDA negotiations. This system is seen as a particularly effective way of making the best use of limited capacity within the Africa Group and the Less-­Developed Group, where most less-­developed states have very small missions in Geneva.27 The ‘focal point’ system is, however, more than a simple resource-­sharing process. It is also, according to several participants I interviewed, an important social system, where officials meet with each other and share experiences of the negotiating process. It is an ‘African space’ in Geneva, where they can celebrate the success­ ful interventions that some may have had in committees or discuss their failures with each other. The ‘focal point’ system provides shared African opportunities for understanding the negotiating process and sharing ideas about how they might better influence that process. Another development in capacity building, one that is mission-­based rather than collectively based, has been the tendency among most African states since 2006 to increase the number of officials working in their missions in Geneva. Using the 2006 and 2009 WTO staff directories as a guide, we can see that states such as Burkina Faso and Kenya have more than doubled the size of their

44   D. Lee ­ issions.28 That said, enhanced capacity in Geneva is often achieved by shifting m staff from capitals or Brussels to work at the WTO.29 It was interesting to experi­ ence first-­hand the very stark contrast in the relatively high staffing levels of the some African missions in Geneva, compared to the low staffing levels found in the same country missions in Brussels. Clearly some least developed African countries have been forced to prioritise engagement in the multilateral negoti­ ations in the DDA over bilateral or regional trade negotiations with the EU. Despite most African missions enjoying enhanced resources, staffing levels are still at a minimum in a number of least developed countries, such as Zambia. Continuing capacity issues seem to be a particular problem for francophone countries, according to some WTO officials, and these states struggle to engage effectively in the DDA, according to a number of delegates and officials inter­ viewed on this subject in Geneva. Finally, a further way that African states have enhanced their capacity to effectively engage in the Doha Round talks has been through coordination with other developing country coalitions, such as the G20, the G33, the NAMA 11, the ACP and the Like-­Minded Group, using the development discourse as a way of building collective action among members. Coordination with these groups has enabled the Africa Group to focus its more limited resources on issues not covered by these groups (such as cotton) or piggyback on the proposals submit­ ted by these groups, such as NAMA. According to some commentators and del­ egates, coordination with other groups has generally proved quite easy. This is because the very size of the Africa Group – as one of the largest coalitions in the WTO – makes it an attractive strategic partner in negotiations. The added value of all this capacity building activity is that previously invis­ ible African states have become more important to the process and form of current WTO negotiations and, thus, to global trade governance as a whole. This has been well-­documented in recent research into, for example, the cotton and TRIPs negotiations (Lee 2009; Mshomba 2009). Africans have learnt to say ‘no’ and enhanced their capacity to effectively engage in the DDA negotiations. In July 2008 – when the prospects for completion of the DDA came as close as they had ever been – the African-­led cotton topic was one of only two issues (the other being the special safeguard mechanism) from a list of 20 so-­called ‘critical issues’ not resolved at the ministerial meeting (Scott and Wilkinson 2011). The Africa Group have repeatedly stated that without an agreement on cotton, there will be no final DDA deal, though, as others have pointed out, the negotiations could also have floundered on a number of key issues for less-­developed coun­ tries, including the special safeguard mechanism, market access for less-­ developed countries, geographic indicators, tropical products and bananas (Ismail 2009; Scott and Wilkinson 2011). A focus on the role that African states have played in the continued deadlock in the DDA negotiations tells us many things about global trade governance; not least that African activism can no longer be ignored. The problem, however, is no longer one of ensuring that African voices are heard in the WTO, but whether anyone is there to listen. Recent trends in the signing of bilateral and regional

African agency in global trade governance   45 preferential trade agreements by large developed states, such as Australia and the USA, suggest that the WTO can, and is, being ignored (also, see Hurt in this volume, in relation to the EU). The deadlock in the DDA has led members to seek alternative forums for securing market opening in least developed states, suggesting that the WTO is less relevant to major trading nations.

African activism and institutional Darwinism The Doha Round is already the longest running trade round in the history of multilateral trade governance. The delay in completing the DDA seems to have increased the appetite of some member states to pursue bilateral and regional alternatives to trade governance. For the USA, Australia and the EU, in par­ ticular, the WTO is not the ‘only game in town’. What Sharman (2007: 52) refers to as ‘institutional Darwinism’ now seems to characterise trade govern­ ance in the international system. That is, the WTO is competing with regional trade agreements and bilateral trade agreements in international trade rule-­ making. Major developed-­country governments – who account for the majority of the value of world trade – have been actively pursuing bilateral and regional free trade and investment agreements, in order to open up existing and new markets for some time (Capling and Low 2010; Crawford and Fiorentino 2005; Flint 2009). In an environment where suitable and more effective (from developed states’ perspectives anyway) alternatives to multilateral trade agree­ ments exist and are more quickly achieved, the political commitment of developed countries to the Doha Round is, not surprisingly, somewhat diluted. Although African states are also increasingly involved in bilateral and regional trade agreements with major markets, particularly Europe and, increas­ ingly, China (Crawford and Fiorentino 2005; Tull 2006), these are less likely to produce the level of development possible in multilateral trade agreements. As noted by Hurt later in this volume, this is because the negotiations usually involve classic structural conditions of weak states trying to negotiate with the strong (conditions that, I have argued, are mitigated by the existence of a pre­ vailing development discourse in the WTO). Outcomes rarely include the kinds of concessions that African countries are demanding in the current Doha Round. In fact, the concessions are often termed ‘WTO Plus’, since they go beyond the WTO’s market opening agenda (Flint 2009). In the case of the Economic Part­ nership Agreement (EPA) negotiations between the EU and ACP countries, the Europeans have been accused of adopting an aggressive stance to the talks with ACP Countries (see Hurt’s chapter in this volume). The problem for African states is that their increased activism – along with that of other developing countries – has raised the level of north–south contesta­ tion over the trade rules and processes governing global trade policy and failed to generate sufficient agreement in areas of trade policy to complete the DDA. The continued deadlock in the DDA has frustrated everyone, including major trading states, such as the USA, EU and China, who now seem less inclined to be as active in pursuing multilateral solutions to market opening, as they are

46   D. Lee bilateral and regional solutions. The surge in developing country engagement with global trade governance in the last decade has, it could be argued, created a counter-­surge in bilateral and regional efforts at trade governance, and, as a result, the WTO appears to be less significant to contemporary international trade governance, at least for the major powers.

Conclusion The WTO is a key multilateral arena for African agency and one in which it has been able to foster and sustain influence on global trade governance for more than a decade. During the DDA negotiations, African agency has been effective in bringing to the fore development issues in a normative frame, so that issues such as cotton subsidies become an intrinsic part of framing the DDA in devel­ opment terms, rather than merely market opening, which was the prevailing dis­ course throughout the GATT regime period. In this chapter, I have argued that African agency in the WTO negotiating process is built upon, and sustained by, opportunities that arise out of the exist­ ence of a prevailing discourse of development, as well as Africa’s effective capa­ city building efforts. My argument was developed using Sharman’s concept of ‘mimetic challenge’, in order to explain how prevailing discourses of dominant actors are used by weak actors to create leverage and influence outcomes. In this case study, what makes a discourse of the strong amenable to manipulation by the weak is the extent to which African states, acting collectively, have the capa­ city to imitate the discourses and, in so doing, hold the developed states to account for the commitments they have made to development, not only in the WTO, but also in the Millennium Development Goals process in the United Nations, the World Bank and the G8. Being able to act out the prevailing devel­ opment discourse of the strong in the DDA enabled the weak to resist attempts by the USA, the EU and other developed states to water down or subvert their own stated development commitments. The decision-­making process of the DDA negotiations – the consensus decision-­making process – created institutional opportunities for dynamic African agency. In order to take full advantage of these normative and operational oppor­ tunities, African nations had to enhance their collective deliberative capacity in the DDA talks. This was achieved by building strategic coalitions with each other and with other developing countries as a collective developing country presence in the DDA. Influence opportunities were also realised through the development of a coordinated African ‘focal point’ mechanism for negotiating committee membership, which ensured an African presence across the DDA decision-­ making process. Active engagement was also accomplished through enhanced capacity from significant new resource investment in many African missions. Finally, selective collaboration with supportive organisations, such as UNCTAD and Oxfam, added knowledge capacity to African agency in the DDA. This chapter has demonstrated the relational interaction between the context of the DDA and African agency. African political actions were formulated in the

African agency in global trade governance   47 context of the normative content of the DDA and in the context of its negotiating and decision-­making processes. That African agency is strategic implies a dynamic relationship between African delegates and the context and content of the DDA in which they work. The opportunity for, and actuality of, African agency is influenced by the structural context and processes of the DDA and the prevailing discourses in the international system. At the same time, the DDA is influenced by African political action. The consequences of Africans asking why and how and saying ‘no’ has been considerable, perhaps even critical, because it has added to the mechanics of deadlock in the negotiations, and, this, in turn, has encouraged the leading states, such as the USA, the EU and Australia, to seek alternative bilateral and pluri-­lateral negotiating forums for opening up markets. African and other developing country political action during the Doha negoti­ ations has made the deadlock the standard, rather than the exceptional, circum­ stance in the WTO during the last ten years. At the same time, the deadlock has constituted African agency as significant to global trade governance.

Notes   1 This chapter is a revised version of Lee, D. (2012) ‘Global trade governance and the challenges of African activism in the Doha Development Agenda negotiations’, Global Society, 26, 1: 83–101. I am very grateful to Will Brown and Sophie Harman for their guidance on the revisions. I also benefitted from the scholarly input and per­ sonal friendship of Nicki Smith, my exceptionally supportive colleague in the POLSIS Department at Birmingham University.   2 For a detailed discussion of the strategic-­relational approach, see Hay (2002).   3 For an excellent review of this literature, see Checkel (2004).   4 A phrase that I borrow from James C. Scott’s Weapons of the Weak: Everyday Forms of Peasant Resistance. See also Sharman (2007).   5 There are four trade-­related issues that are referred to as the ‘Singapore Issues’: gov­ ernment procurement, investment, competition and facilitation.   6 For a detailed discussion of the diplomatic strategies of Africa states in the DDA, see Lee (2009); Lee and Smith (2010).   7 The author held 24 open-­ended interviews during March 2010, June 2010 and July 2011 with various officials based in African missions in Geneva and Brussels, as well as officials from the African Union, the WTO, UNCTAD and key non-­governmental organisations who work with the Africa Group in the WTO. These interviews were conducted on the basis that interviewees would remain anonymous and quotes would not be directly attributed, as is customary practice.   8 For detailed analysis of the Cancun ministerial meeting, see Narlikar and Wilkinson (2004).   9 For detailed analyses of the negotiations up to, and including, the Hong Kong minis­ terial, see Lee and Wilkinson (2007). 10 Special safeguard measures are a tariff mechanism that protects poor farmers by allowing some developing countries and least developed countries to set a tariff when prices fall or when imports surge. For details, see Scott and Wilkinson (2010). 11 For a detailed discussion of the development content of the DDA negotiations, see Scott and Wilkinson (2010). 12 The WTO website provides a useful timeline of the DDA negotiations at: www.wto. org/english/tratop_e/dda_e/negotiations_summary_e.htm. For a more detailed discus­ sion of the course of the DDA negotiations from a developing country perspective

48   D. Lee written by the Head of the South African Trade delegation in Geneva, see Ismail (2009); Scott and Wilkinson (2010). 13 Interviews with Mission officials and WTO staff in Geneva, June 2010. 14 Most of Pascal Lamy’s recent speeches are attempts to create new momentum in the negotiations. See www.wto.org/english/news_e/sppl_e/sppl_e.htm (accessed 28 March 2011). 15 Interviews with officials from African missions, Geneva, March and June 2010 and July 2011. 16 The Draft Cancun Ministerial Text, known mostly as the ‘Derbez Text’, is available on the WTO website at: www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min03_e/draft_ decl_rev2_e.htm. 17 Interview with African trade delegate, Geneva, July 2011. 18 Interview with official from African Mission, Geneva, July 2011. 19 Most African countries became members of the GATT as colonies of the signatory states. Membership simply entailed the extension of GATT rights and obligations to African countries, rather than any active participation in GATT negotiations. For details, see Mshomba (2009). 20 See, for example, the following Africa Group submissions: WTO (2006c); WTO (2005); WTO (2006d); WTO (2006e). 21 For details of the Green Room process, see Jawara and Kwa (2004). 22 Interviews with African officials in African missions at the African Union Mission, as well as staff from the ICTSD, South Centre and UNCTAD, Geneva, March and June 2010. 23 Interview with WTO officials, Geneva, March 2010. 24 Interview with an official from African Mission, Geneva, June 2010. 25 Interviews with African officials in African missions and the AU Mission, as well as staff from the ICTSD, South Centre, UNCTAD, Geneva, March and June 2010. 26 Interviews with officials from African missions, Geneva, March and June 2010. 27 For example, Cape Verde, Namibia and Tunisia have just one representative in Geneva. Data from WTO (2009). 28 In Kenya, the staffing levels rose from four in 2006 to 11 in 2009. In Burkina Faso, staffing levels also rose from four in 2006 to 11 in 2009, making their Geneva Mission the same size as that of Brazil and South Korea. See WTO (2006f ) and WTO (2009). 29 Interviews with officials from African missions, Geneva and Brussels, June 2010.

4 African agency in world trade undermined? The case of bilateral relations with the European Union Stephen R. Hurt Historically, the dominant understanding of Africa’s place in world politics has been one dominated by concepts such as ‘marginalisation’ or ‘exploitation’. During the 1960s and 1970s, there were a number of adherents of the dependency theory view, which understood African underdevelopment as a direct consequence of the continent’s economic relations with the core of the world economy (see Amin 1976; Rodney 1972). Then as we entered the post-­Cold War era, Africa’s international relations were seen to result in a struggle for state survival as superpower rivalry within the continent gave way to the rigours of an increasingly global economy (Clapham 1996). Others went as far as to argue that after two decades of the structural adjustment era, due to the persistence of neo-­ patrimonial regimes in particular, what we were witnessing at the turn of the century was the persistence of long-­term economic crisis in African economies (Van de Walle 2001). By contrast, over the last few years, another competing story of Africa is beginning to emerge. For example, an editorial in the Observer newspaper in February 2011 proclaimed that a new continent is emerging, concluding that: ‘Europe and the UK have been slow to adjust to the rise of an Africa powered by economic growth and a burgeoning consumer boom. The African lions are finding their voice’ (Observer 2011: 28). Similarly, a recent World Bank publication concluded that: ‘there is a good chance that the continent’s strong economic performance of the last decade will be sustained’ (Chuhan-­Pole and Devarajan 2011: 17). To support this changing narrative of Africa’s position in the global political economy, the evidence that tends to be provided is the rates of economic growth of key African economies. For example, six of the ten fastest growing economies in the world from 2000 to 2010 were to be found in Africa, with Angola at the top of the list (The Economist 2011: 12). Similarly, Africa’s share of world trade has increased in recent years, although there was a downturn in 2009, when the figure fell again to 3.1 per cent (UN Economic Commission for Africa 2011: 50). This decade of economic growth coincides, and is partly explained by, the fact that during recent years, we have also witnessed increasing African cooperation with other countries in the global south – most notably, China (Lopes 2010: 74–77) – and the associated boom in the demand for Africa’s natural resources (Cornelissen et al. 2012: 5).

50   S. R. Hurt It is not the intention of this chapter to question the fact that there is clearly some truth to the claim that the fortunes of African economies have improved over recent years. Of course, it should be noted that many of these statistics reflect increases from a very low base. For example, we should remember that from 1985 to 1995, the average annual growth of GNP per capita in sub-­Saharan Africa was –1.1 per cent (World Bank 2000: 23). Similarly, between 1950 and 1999, the region’s share of world exports fell from 3 per cent to just 1.5 per cent (Hoogvelt 2002: 17). Moreover, there is other more contradictory evidence. The Human Development Index for sub-­Saharan Africa for 2011 is 0.463, which is below any other region of the world (UNDP 2011: 130). Africa’s share of global inflows of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) remains small and fell to 4.4 per cent in 2010, despite a growth in inflows to developing countries as a whole (UNCTAD 2011: xiii). Coupled with these good news stories about African economic development, in recent years, both in the academic literature and in policymaking circles, we have seen an emerging discourse that refers to the increased influence or ‘agency’ of developing countries in the global political economy. For example, a recent article by a UN official suggests that: ‘the rising profile of the African continent also reveals the growing role of a number of its countries in the emergence of a new South agency’ (Lopes 2010: 69). In part, this can be related to the consequent rise of emerging powers in the global economy, in particular, China, and their engagement with Africa. As Cornelissen suggests, this shift ‘has a great deal to do with the way in which the economic, but increasingly political significance of states from the developing world affects politics in the international system’ (Cornelissen 2009: 8). It is also reflective of a change in approach, however problematic, of the global north to Africa, which is encapsulated in the post-­Washington Consensus approach to development and, in particular, the claims made about ‘partnership’ and ‘ownership’. The specific focus of this chapter is one particular aspect of this wider debate on ‘African agency’ – namely, the influence of African states in world trade. Congruent with the broader literature outlined above, in the arena of trade, some scholars have begun to acknowledge that African countries are becoming more influential. In particular, reference is made to the rise of African activism at the multilateral level through negotiations within the World Trade Organization (WTO) (see Lee this volume, 2009; Mshomba 2009). This chapter investigates the agency of African states in relation to a dilemma that Lee identifies in reference to the success of their activism within the WTO. The continued deadlock of the Doha Round of negotiations led major trade powers, in particular, the European Union (EU), to switch their attention to bilateral trade arrangements. However, these, Lee suggests, are ‘less likely to produce the level of development possible in multilateral trade agreements . . . because the negotiations usually involve classic structural conditions of weak states trying to negotiate with the strong’ (Lee 2012: 100). Whilst we might want to problematise the developmental potential of the Doha Round itself (Scott and Wilkinson 2011), this shift towards bilateralism in trade is certainly significant,

African agency in world trade undermined?   51 both for Africa’s development prospects and the central analytical theme of this volume – namely, ‘African agency’. One of the key changes in the governance of world trade since the creation of the WTO in 1995 is the exponential growth of bilateral free trade agreements. Notifications have risen sharply since the early 1990s, to the extent that, at the time of writing, 224 regional trade agreements are currently in operation, of which, 100 cover both goods and services (WTO 2012a). It is important to note, here, that this proliferation of bilateralism has occurred at a time when progress in a new multilateral agreement within the WTO appears indefinitely delayed. The response of the established powers within the WTO (notably, the USA and the EU) has been to switch their attention to negotiating bilateral agreements with both emerging markets and much of the developing world. In a recent discussion document, the European Commission outlined that if all its ongoing negotiations were concluded, then approximately half of all of the EU’s external trade would be covered by Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) (European Commission 2010: 10). This chapter focuses on the EU’s bilateral relations with Africa and, in particular, the negotiations over Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) between the EU and sub-­regions within sub-­Saharan Africa. It considers the ‘agency’ of African countries in their trade relations with the EU. The central argument is that an understanding of the agency of African states in the global governance of trade needs to consider this growth of bilateral trade agreements. I suggest that the agency of African states within negotiations in the WTO has been undermined, to a significant extent, when we consider EPA negotiations with the EU. This is because a stalemate in the WTO, celebrated by most development non-­ governmental organisations (NGOs) at the time of the collapse of the talks in Cancún, has simply shifted the sites of agency in international trade from the multilateral to the bilateral. African states, in contrast with the Caribbean region, have been reluctant to agree to ‘full’ EPAs with the EU. It has been suggested that this willingness of the Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM) cannot simply be explained with reference to its specific institutional architecture or economic interests. In addition, Heron argues that: A willingness to sign a comprehensive agreement – and to do so first – was key to extracting important concessions from the EU in areas such as Mode IV [on the temporary movement of people], delayed liberalisation schedules and product exemptions, and – most importantly – preferential access to development finance. (2011: 350) Nevertheless, despite the relative resistance of African states, negotiations have continued, and European negotiators have remained committed to the eventual conclusion of full EPAs. This is evident in two key proposals made by the European Commission during 2011. First, in May, they outlined plans to significantly reduce the list of countries who will qualify for the EU’s Generalised System of

52   S. R. Hurt Preferences (GSP) (European Commission 2011a). The current arrangements of the GSP are due to expire at the end of 2013. Then, in September 2011, the Commission released a proposal to end preferential market access for those African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) states who fail to demonstrate that they are taking necessary steps to ratify their EPAs by 1 January 2014 (European Commission 2011b).1 The rest of the chapter is structured as follows. In the next section, I outline the conceptual basis of my understanding of agency. Here, I argue that agency needs to be understood within the broader material and ideational structure, which sets the boundaries of what African states can achieve. I then explore the position of Africa in world trade and, in particular, the role played by African states in multilateral trade negotiations. This section acknowledges how they have contributed to the impasse in the Doha Round, whilst offering some notes of caution on the limits of this agency, given the existence of bilateral trade and aid relations between Africa and the world’s major economic powers. I then turn my attention to Africa’s trade relations with the EU. Here, I start by briefly considering the relative significance of trade relations between the EU and Africa in light of recent structural changes occurring in the global political economy. I then set out in detail the constraints to African agency that have emerged in the EPA negotiations with the EU, with respect to both process and content. The concluding section considers the wider lessons that we can draw on for questions of African agency from this focus on bilateral trade relations with the EU.

Understanding agency When considering African ‘agency’, the aim of this chapter is not to return to arguments of ‘marginalisation’. Rather, as Taylor suggests (and somewhat contrary to Andreasson in this volume), Africa has always ‘. . . been inextricably entwined in world politics and has continually exercised its agency’ (Taylor 2010: 2). However, what the optimistic discourse on African agency fails to sufficiently acknowledge is the persistence of wider structures (both material and ideational) that set the parameters of Africa’s engagement in the global political economy. In a more abstract sense, I adopt the view of Hay in this regard, who suggests that: ‘the notion of agency implies more than mere political action or conduct . . . it implies a sense of free will, choice or autonomy’ (Hay 2002: 94). Proponents of the ‘rise of Africa’ thesis tend to focus on material changes in the relative significance of the continent in the global economy to justify their argument. However, it is the contention of this chapter that we also need to consider agency in an ideational sense. In other words, ‘ideas of the social world arise from, as well as construct, the material conditions in which social groups exist’ (Bieler and Morton 2001: 21). The governance of world trade is reflective of historical power dynamics that become institutionally embedded. In this sense, the structure itself is strategically selective and, in the words of Hay again: ‘structures . . . provide resources and opportunities for the powerful, while simultaneously constraining the powerless and the subordinated’ (1995: 206). Hence, this chapter

African agency in world trade undermined?   53 adopts a position which suggests that we must take structural constraints as significant, whilst, at the same time, not wanting to replicate the structural determinism of approaches such as neo-­realism, world systems theory or dependency theory. Rather, structures (both ideational and material) are seen as placing limits on the actions of (in the case of this chapter) states, but these outcomes are not predetermined. The example of African agency within the WTO is testament to this. However, the results of such contestation at the multilateral level have reduced the appeal of the WTO to the established trading powers. The case of bilateral trade relations with the EU, explored below, highlights the structural weakness that persists in the position of African states within world trade. The structure of world trade is conceptualised in the Coxian sense of ‘historical structures’, which means that although not fixed, they are only ‘transformed when material circumstances have changed or prevailing meanings and purposes have been challenged by new practices’ (Cox 1992: 176). In this sense, agency should be understood as a way to challenge the dominant material and ideational structures of the global political economy. So what are the material and ideational structures of world trade? In a material sense, the rules of the game are still dominated by the most powerful states. Such power asymmetries are dialectically related to the dominance of neoliberal ideas reflected in the unquestioned belief in the benefits of trade liberalisation for developing countries. In terms of trade negotiations between north and south, since the Uruguay Round of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), these ideas are reflected in ‘the predominance of the principles of reciprocity and the single undertaking at the expense of the use of the special and differential (S&D) treatment principle’ (Tussie and Saguier 2011: 6). And yet, we also find imbalances in market access between the north and developing countries, particularly with respect to northern protectionism of the agricultural sector and the use of non-­tariff barriers by industrial countries. Since the creation of the WTO, we have also seen a relative increase in the ideational consequences of trade negotiations as they have expanded their reach way beyond a focus on the reduction of tariffs and quotas. As O’Brien and Williams suggest, there has been a change in ‘the character of negotiations from a focus on bargaining over products to negotiations over policies that shape the conditions of competition’ (O’Brien and Williams 2010: 168). As discussed later in this chapter, the focus in the EPA negotiations on the WTO-­plus agenda is symptomatic of such changes.

Africa in world trade African agency in world trade has been highlighted with respect to the effective diplomacy of African states within the WTO. At a general level, African states have contributed to the impasse in the Doha Development Round of the WTO. The WTO itself has been active in providing capacity building support to help African states increase their influence within the organisation. Within the WTO, African states have made use of a number of groupings that have bolstered their

54   S. R. Hurt overall influence (Lee 2012: 99). This certainly contrasts with the influence of African states in the GATT, prior to the formation of the WTO. African states have been able to exploit the discourse of fairness and focus on ‘development’ within the WTO to increase their influence within the organisation. Two key examples of activism within the WTO highlight the claims of African agency in world trade. Lee (2009) focuses on the role played by Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali – the so-­called ‘Cotton 4’ – in WTO ministerial meetings. The ‘Cotton 4’ have pursued a campaign, which has been supported by a number of NGOs, to challenge the huge domestic subsidies provided to producers of cotton in the USA (and, to a lesser extent, in the EU) on the basis that they lower global prices due to over-­supply. She suggests that this case ‘serves to challenge traditional views that small developing states are vulnerable and weak in multilateral trade negotiations’ (Lee 2009: 200). Whilst the ‘Cotton 4’ have so far failed to get a final agreement on the issue of cotton subsidies, another example of African activism in the WTO has led to a more concrete outcome. This is the challenge posed by the Africa Group regarding the provisions on compulsory licensing under the WTO Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) accord. The key focus being to secure access to cheaper generic anti-­retrovirals used for the treatment of HIV/AIDS. This led to a temporary waiver agreed in 2003, which was then converted into a permanent amendment to the TRIPs Agreement in December 2005. As Mshomba concludes, getting a permanent amendment to the WTO’s TRIPs Agreement, to allow compulsory licensing for the production of generic drugs in cases where there is a public health emergency, must be seen as a victory for the Africa Group (Mshomba 2009: 134). However, even here, we must add a significant note of caution. With hindsight, it has become clear that since the waiver was agreed in 2003, very little has actually changed in practice (Morin and Gold 2010: 564). This is evident in the almost non-­existent take-­up of the TRIPs amendment. At the time of writing, there has only been one notification to the WTO’s TRIPs Council in this regard (WTO 2012b). At a more general level, any claims to the agency of African countries in the multilateral trade system must be understood within the context of the myriad bilateral trade and aid relationships between Africa and key trading powers. The fact that these trade partners are also aid donors should always be remembered. Hence, developed countries ‘can use criteria for preferential access to their markets and conditions for financial assistance to propel African countries to “voluntarily” reduce barriers to trade and foreign investment, without necessarily resorting to the WTO dispute settlement mechanism’ (Mshomba 2009: 80). The negotiation of EPAs with Africa enables the EU to dictate the direction of its trade relations with African countries. Moreover, due to the broad nature of what is under the remit of ‘trade’ now, what in the past may have been considered in the sphere of ‘domestic’ policymaking is now discussed within trade negoti­ ations. Although not the focus of this paper, it is also worth noting that the US African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) also requires, as part of its

African agency in world trade undermined?   55 e­ ligibility criteria, a series of measures that encroach on what could be considered the ‘domestic’.2 Due to the nature of the tariff levels agreed at the conclusion of the Uruguay Round of the GATT, African countries have significant room for manoeuvre when it comes to increasing trade barriers without compromising their WTO obligations. As a result, Mshomba suggests that it is therefore unsurprising that developed countries choose to use preferential agreements and development assistance to ‘encourage’ African countries to pursue trade liberalisation (2009: 86). As Robert Zoellick, then-­US trade representative, famously concluded in 2003 as the WTO talks in Cancún collapsed: ‘we will keep opening markets one way or another’ (cited in Denny et al. 2003). For example, both the EU and the USA argue that the WTO’s protection of intellectual property under the TRIPs Agreement does not go far enough and, as a result, in their bilateral trade agreements with other countries, they often push for stronger protection of intellectual property (Mshomba 2009: 122). Pharmaceutical companies in the USA have lobbied the government successfully for tighter rules in bilateral trade negotiations with regard to the use of compulsory licensing (Mshomba 2009: 139). Similarly, bilateral trade deals between the EU and third parties (for example, India) may contain intellectual property provisions that will undermine the ability of sub-­Saharan African countries to import generic anti-­retrovirals to help ameliorate the HIV/AIDS pandemic. The Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in South Africa campaigned in 2011 against a draft of the EU–India FTA, which they claimed included: ‘provisions regarding data exclusivity and tougher border measures, both of which go far beyond what is required under international trade law’ (TAC et al. 2011).

EU–Africa trade relations As I have already suggested in the introduction to this chapter, the rise of the so-­ called ‘emerging powers’ has altered the environment of Africa’s international relations. There is certainly renewed interest in the continent, and the closer political and economic ties that have emerged between Africa and southern ‘partners’, such as China, India and Brazil, have altered the context for relations between the global north and Africa. In essence, the consequence is not that we are witnessing a replacement of the old north–south with the new south–south, but rather that the rise of emerging powers results in intensified competition within the global economy (Andreasson 2011: 1170). The European Commission certainly seems to be implementing a trade policy that is strategically informed by such a worldview. In their ‘Global Europe’ strategy, they asserted that ‘where our partners have signed FTAs with other countries that are competitors to the EU, we should seek full parity at least’ (European Commission 2006: 9). However, whilst the configuration of the global economy is clearly changing, Africa’s relations with the EU remain highly significant. As Table 4.1 demonstrates, in 2010, the EU comfortably remains the continent’s major trade partner, accounting for just over one-­third of both Africa’s total imports and its exports.

127,783 49,223 23,353 11,203 10,390 141,999 363,951

Total value in 2010 (€ million) 35.11 13.52 6.42 3.08 2.85 39.02 100.00

Share of total imports (%) EU United States China India Brazil The rest Total

Major export partners

116,618 59,729 42,974 16,471 8,530 86,445 330,767

Total value in 2010 (€ million)

35.26 18.06 12.99 4.98 2.58 26.13 100.00

Share of total exports (%)

Source: All trade data comes from the European Commission, DG Trade, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/trade/creating-opportunities/bilateral-relations/statistics/ (accessed 9 September 2011).

EU China United States India South Korea The rest Total

Major import partners

Table 4.1  Africa’s major trade partners

African agency in world trade undermined?   57 It is important to put the current EPA negotiations into their historical context. Whilst early relations between the EU and Africa, formalised in the two Yaoundé Conventions, notionally recognised the sovereignty of their newly independent partners, they were still dominated by Europe’s economic interests (Koutrakou 2004: 122). Lomé I, which was agreed in 1975, did mark something of a departure and reflected the era of ‘Third Worldism’ prevalent in the early 1970s. ACP states secured enhanced financial aid and non-­reciprocal trade preferences. However, only a few years later, as the negotiations began for a new convention in 1978, an observer noted that: ‘the atmosphere surrounding the current ACP–EC negotiations is very different from that prevailing in 1974–5’ (Cosgrove Twitchett 1978: 473). Looking back, we can say that Lomé I represented a high point in African agency in terms of the ability of ACP states to significantly determine both the material and ideational contours of its relations with the EU. Ever since, we have witnessed the gradual adoption of neoliberal ideas, and, in particular, EU policymakers increasingly came to question the non-­reciprocal nature of the trade arrangement (Hurt 2003: 163–166). In terms of thinking about the agency of African states during this period, it is important to remember the foundational role played by the EU and, especially, the European Commission in setting the agenda for change in relations with ACP states. The idea of splitting the ACP Group into sub-­regions can be traced back to the mid-­1990s and a European Commission Green Paper on the future of EU–ACP relations (European Commission 1996). This included a range of future options for EU–ACP trade relations, including the idea of regional agreements, which initially became known as Regional Economic Partnership Agreements (REPAs) during the subsequent negotiations that followed (Dickson 2004: 49). These ideas were then encapsulated in the Cotonou Agreement of 2000, which set out the framework for the renegotiation of the EU’s trade relations with the ACP; the ultimate aim being to secure EPAs with sub-­regions of the ACP Group, which would be based on reciprocal trade liberalisation in order to satisfy WTO rules. Article XXIV of the WTO requires that regional FTAs include a commitment to remove trade barriers to ‘substantially all’ the trade between the contracting parties. From past experience, such as the negotiation of the EU’s Trade, Development and Co-­operation Agreement (TDCA) with South Africa, it is likely that this will be interpreted as 90 per cent of existing trade, so as to avoid any potential challenge from third parties within the WTO.3 The EPA negotiations began in September 2002 with a first phase of talks between the EU and the entire ACP Group. Then from October 2003, negoti­ ations continued, with the different sub-­regions of the ACP identified as potential EPA partners. In line with the expiry of a WTO waiver covering the EU’s trade preference for ACP states, an initial deadline of the end of 2007 was set for the negotiations. Only the Caribbean region signed a full EPA by this deadline, whilst in the negotiations with the various African sub-­regions, only interim agreements were concluded with some of the participating states. In addition to the Caribbean and Pacific sub-­regions, the EU is conducting EPA negotiations with five different groupings in Africa. These are West Africa,

58   S. R. Hurt Central Africa, Eastern and Southern Africa (ESA), the East African Community (EAC) and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). These EPA negotiating groups cut across pre-­existing regional groupings. For example, different member states of the SADC are involved in one of Central Africa, ESA, EAC or SADC EPA negotiations with the EU. It is also important to acknowledge that these sub-­regions are split depending on their development status. Least developed countries (LDCs) already qualify for duty-­free and quota-­free access to the EU market by virtue of the ‘Everything But Arms’ (EBA) initiative that was launched by the EU in 2001. Non-­LDCs, on the other hand, do not gain the same level of preferential access, and, as a result, most non-­LDCs in Africa initialled interim EPAs before the expiry of the WTO waiver for Cotonou Preferences at the end of 2007. Progress in negotiations with the different African sub-­regions has been variable. A summary of the state of play at the time of writing is provided in Table 4.2. Table 4.2 The state of play in Africa’s Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) negotiations EPA sub-regional grouping

Progress up until July 2012

West Africa

Sixteen states are involved in the negotiations. These are the fifteen member states of ECOWAS, plus Mauritania. Most of this grouping are Least Developed Countries (LDCs). So far, Côte d’Ivoire has signed an interim EPA and Ghana has initialled one.

Central Africa

Eight states are involved: Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, São Tomé and Principe. Most of this grouping are LDCs. So far, only Cameroon has signed an interim EPA.

Eastern and Southern Africa

Twelve states are involved: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan (Horn of Africa); Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe (Southern Africa); Comoros, Mauritius, Madagascar and Seychelles (Indian Ocean islands). Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Zimbabwe all signed an interim EPA, which began to be implemented in May 2012.

East African Community (EAC)

The EAC comprises Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania, Burundi and Rwanda. All states are LDCs, except Kenya. All the EAC member states have initialled an interim EPA.

Southern African Development Community (SADC)

The negotiating group contains only seven of the 15 SADC member states. They are Angola, Botswana, Lesotho, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland and South Africa. An interim EPA was signed by Botswana, Lesotho, Swaziland and Mozambique and has been initialled by Namibia. South Africa has its own trade agreement (TDCA) with the EU.

Source: Information taken from European Commission, DG Trade, available at: http://ec.europa.eu/ trade/wider-agenda/development/economic-partnerships/negotiations-and-agreements/ (accessed 3 July 2012).

African agency in world trade undermined?   59 I now turn directly to the question of the agency of African states and how it has been significantly undermined by both the content and process of bilateral trade relations with the EU. In doing so, I highlight how the agency of African states at the multilateral level (as already discussed) is much less evident in bilateral negotiations with the EU. As one commentator suggests: The EU’s push for EPAs is inextricably linked to the WTO’s political pro­ cesses, where decisions are based on a one-­country, one-­vote consensus . . . EPAs provide the ideal political framework for the EU to neutralise the potential for opposition to its agenda in the WTO. (Kamidza 2005) Meanwhile, the scope for African states to effectively challenge both the ideational and material basis of the EPA negotiations is significantly compromised. The content of the EPA negotiations highlights the limited impact that African states have had on determining the agenda. This is reflective of wider trends in bilateral trade negotiations, where it has been argued that: ‘asymmetries are most evident in the capacity of industrial countries to select issues and turn them into negotiable propositions’ (Tussie and Saguier 2011: 9). Of particular significance is the EU’s desire to make full EPAs ‘WTO-­Plus’ agreements. For EPAs to be WTO-­compatible, it is only necessary for them to include the liberalisation of trade in goods. However, the EU has been very keen to achieve concessions from ACP states on the so-­called ‘Singapore Issues’ (government procurement, investment, competition and trade facilitation). These are also central to the EU’s wider commercial trade agenda and are included in ongoing FTA negotiations with other countries/regions. It was the rejection of these demands (except for trade facilitation) by developing countries, including many African states, which contributed to the collapse of the WTO ministerial held in Cancún during September 2003. Nevertheless, despite the failure of the developed economies (in particular, the EU) to include these trade-­related aspects in multilateral trade negotiations and the concerns raised by ACP states over their inclusion in EPA negotiations, the European Commission has been determined to include them at the bilateral level. In fact, the Commission has ‘insisted that binding rules on services and “some” related issues represented the real development component of EPAs’ (Meyn 2008: 519). In contrast, a critical reading of the EU’s desire to include a number of trade-­related issues highlights the fact that in doing so, the EU seeks to lock African states into a particular form of economic governance. Hence, comprehensive EPAs threaten to undermine agency by restricting the autonomy of African states to determine what they consider to be their most suitable development strategy (Hurt 2012: 498–499). It is worth noting here that the intransigence of many African states in refusing to sign up to full EPAs, in contrast to the Caribbean region, does highlight some resistance to the EU’s WTO-­plus agenda. Whilst the EU remains wholly committed to the inclusion of the ‘Singapore Issues’, it does appear that, ten

60   S. R. Hurt years after the start of EPA negotiations, the EU has potentially softened its line about what is now possible. In its 2012 Communication on Trade and Development, DG Trade outlines that: If ACP countries so choose, EPAs will include commitments on services, investment and trade-­related areas, identified in the Cotonou Agreement as important drivers of growth. If comprehensive and regional agreements prove to be out of reach, variable geometry or multiple-­speed agreements can be introduced. (European Commission 2012: 12–13) Sub-­regional EPAs are also compromising African agency in terms of the processes of their own regional integration projects. Where the EU is currently rather unique, within the context of broader north–south trade relations, is in its desire to promote what has been labelled ‘regulatory regionalism’ via EPAs in Africa (Sicurelli 2010: 150). In essence, the model of regionalism contained within EPAs is closely based on that adopted by the EU. There has been significant criticism of the impact of EPA negotiations on processes of regional integration in Africa. A United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) review identified ‘the lack of coherence between regional integration and EPA configuration’ as one of the most problematic outstanding issues in the EPA negotiations (UN Economic Commission for Africa 2007: 7). For example, in the EU’s negotiations with SADC, South Africa has been opposed to regional liberalisation with the EU due to its own economic interests and therefore ‘stood accused by the smaller states of pursuing its parochial interests at the cost of the region’ (Vickers 2011: 194). It seems clear that EPA negotiations are disturbing processes of regional integration, although, of course, this is not to say that regional integration in Africa prior to EPA negotiations was functioning successfully.4 Nevertheless, what EPA negotiations are doing is providing a further obstacle to the Abuja plan outlined by the African Union (AU) for regional integration within Africa. Another problematic aspect of the content of the EPA negotiations is that, despite the rhetorical claims of the benefits that they offer for African development, the EU may actually be seeking to gain a competitive advantage over other economic actors (in particular, the USA and China), who usually focus on bilateral trade deals with individual African countries (Sicurelli 2010: 100). As a result, the EU has included a ‘Most-­Favoured Nation’ clause in the interim EPAs signed with African states/sub-­regions. This requires them to accord the EU any favourable trade arrangements that they may agree in future FTAs with other major trading powers. In the SADC EPA negotiations, this proved to be a major point of disagreement between the EU and South Africa, who are not currently tied to such a clause in their TDCA.5 In comparing the approach of the EU and the USA, with specific reference to EPAs and the similarly delayed attempts by the USA to negotiate an FTA with the Southern African Customs Union (SACU), Stoneman and Thompson concluded that they are both operating in a

African agency in world trade undermined?   61 fashion reminiscent of colonial empires, rather than observing the multilateral rules of the WTO (2007: 231). In terms of the process of the EPA negotiations, it is evident that, in bilateral negotiations with the EU, African states have a relatively weakened capacity as compared with the WTO. Negotiations are bound up with the process of EU development assistance. Aid recipients are always in a weaker position when negotiating with donors, even when the focus is not the aid itself. In fact, it could be argued that even at the multilateral level, the leverage of African countries in the WTO is compromised by the wider context of aid dependency and a reliance on developed countries (Mshomba 2009: 21). With respect to the European Development Fund (EDF ), the European Commission also has discretionary power.6 Compared with other aid instruments, because the EDF is agreed outside of the EU budget, member states (via the EDF Committee) maintain tight control on the use of these funds (Holden 2009: 133). In this regard, it is interesting to note that during the EPA negotiations, the ACP’s proposal for a dedicated adjustment fund, in addition to money from the EDF, was rejected by the EU (Sicurelli 2010: 106). The fact that EPAs are being negotiated with sub-­regions of the ACP Group of states further weakens their negotiating strength, given the associated demands on African negotiators at the multilateral level. As one official in DG Development noted, it is not easy for African states ‘to maintain teams of capable negotiators at the same time in Geneva and at the EPA table’.7 Similarly, a UNECA review was categorical in its view that in all the different sub-­regions, the ‘negotiating capacities of African countries are stretched thin by the concomitance of WTO negotiations, EPA processes and parallel regional integration talks, not to mention other bilateral trade negotiations with third parties’ (UN Economic Commission for Africa 2007: 6). In the WTO, African states have been able to make effective use of the various negotiating coalitions that have been created. However, in bilateral negotiations with the EU, this level of coalition-­building is not possible. In an attempt to mitigate this problem, in recent years, the AU Commission has organised coordination meetings to bring all the different African EPA negotiating groups together to share information and devise common strategies. This followed a resolution at a meeting of AU trade ministers in January 2007, which called for a strengthening of the AU’s coordination of EPA negotiations (African Union 2007: 2). The process of EPA negotiations also takes place under terms that are largely dictated by the European Commission. At times, the EU has used the threat of the loss of preferential market access to its market and/or the withdrawal of development assistance as a way to put pressure on African states to come to agreement. To begin with, negotiations with the African sub-­regions moved forwards fairly slowly and were conducted at a fairly superficial level. As the 31 December 2007 deadline drew closer, the EU introduced its core issues.8 Faced with the prospect of a loss of tariff preferences, a number of non-­LDCs felt compelled to initial interim EPAs before this deadline. A report published by Traidcraft the following year expressed concern that: ‘the EC is manipulating the

62   S. R. Hurt prospect of aid in addition to loss of market access in order to pressure ACP countries to agree to proposals that would have very damaging implications for development’ (Traidcraft 2008: 3). It was these kinds of negotiating tactics that led the ACP Council of Ministers, in December 2007, to express serious criticism of ‘the enormous pressure . . . brought to bear on the ACP States by the European Commission to initial the interim trade arrangements’ (ACP Council of Ministers 2007: 1). The need to comply with WTO regulations has also been used more recently as a justification for the proposal by the European Commission to insert an expiry date of 1 January 2014 for the existing trade preferences accorded to 18 of the 36 ACP states that negotiated EPAs in 2007, unless they are moving towards ratification. This group of 18 states includes a majority of African states, and, as a result, Botswana and Namibia (as upper middle income countries) would lose not just their current preferential trade access, but would also be precluded from qualifying for the EU’s GSP in line with the Commission’s proposals to restrict the criterion for this pillar of its external trade in 2014.9 This, despite the fact that, by June 2012, neither an ACP state who has signed a full EPA nor a member of the WTO has raised a complaint about the trade preferences that were accorded by the EU in 2008 to those ACP states still involved in the EPA negotiating process (ACP Council of Ministers 2012: 31). This approach highlights the continued determination within DG Trade to conclude more comprehensive EPAs. In response in December 2011, the ACP Council of Ministers called for the removal of this proposal on the grounds that it: ‘further shifts the balance of power in an already asymmetrical process of negotiations in favour of the EU’ (ACP Council of Ministers 2011: 17). Finally, agency is even more limited in the other EU trade regimes that are open to the different categories of African states. The EBA initiative, which only applies to LDCs, is not a binding treaty, and, as such, it is not necessarily the obvious alternative to EPAs for these countries. As Flint explains, the EBA could be withdrawn unilaterally in the future and, because it lacks an aid component, it provides only ‘the illusion of “wriggle room” with regards to the EPA’ (Flint 2008: 78). The EU’s GSP is also determined by the EU and is periodically reviewed. The consequences of this are clear in the recent proposal to reduce the list of beneficiary countries. The EU claims the rationale for this is more effective targeting of trade preferences to the poorest countries in the world, in order to focus its impact on poverty reduction. However, this approach prioritises national averages, which consequently ignores the incidence of poverty in middle-­income countries that stand to lose their GSP status. The special incentive scheme within the EU’s GSP (known as GSP+) provides trade preferences that are superior to the standard GSP, in return for evidence of economic vulnerability and a commitment to signing international agreements related to the areas of sustainable development and good governance. Like the standard GSP, the criteria for the GSP+ scheme are determined by the EU. Countries have to apply to the European Commission to be considered for membership. If accepted, the Commission then monitors the ratification processes of the relevant international

African agency in world trade undermined?   63 agreements and can unilaterally suspend those states deemed to be performing unsatisfactorily.

Conclusions It should be acknowledged that there are arguments for adopting a more optimistic reading of the potential agency of Africa in the future than that which has been provided in this chapter. As I have acknowledged, in the realm of international trade negotiations, African states (or rather, state elites) have begun to find, especially at the multilateral level, some limited room for manoeuvre. It is certainly not the case that the material and ideational foundations of the global political economy are fixed and immutable. Ongoing financial problems in Europe, coupled with the increasing role of emerging powers in Africa, especially China, are changing the context of EU–Africa relations. With regard to China’s role, it has been suggested that: ‘its involvement has significantly altered the bargaining environment and available leverage options for [Africa]’ (Cornelissen et al. 2012: 7). What is being offered by China is an alternative to the conditionalities of Western trade and aid relations, and, rhetorically at least, this is portrayed by the Chinese Government as genuine south–south cooperation. However, whether such an alternative offers significant scope for increased African agency is still questionable. Despite this changing context, it is the contention of this chapter that bilateral trade relations with the EU will remain significant for the foreseeable future. Moreover, EPA negotiations provide a contrast to the greater leverage available to African states at the multilateral level. As I have demonstrated, African states have managed to exert significant influence on negotiations within the WTO. This has been demonstrated by the collective ability of African states to say ‘no’ to certain proposals (in particular, the inclusion of the so-­called ‘Singapore Issues’) and their ability to secure alterations to WTO legislation, such as the amendment to the TRIPs Agreement. However, in bilateral relations with the EU, there is still the possibility that the ‘Singapore Issues’ will be included if full EPAs are eventually concluded with African sub-­regions. Hence, there is a danger that the achievement of deadlock in the Doha Round of the WTO by African states may result in something of a ‘hollow victory’, given the potential developments in bilateral relations with the EU. So far, African states have stalled the process of negotiations or, in many cases, refused to initial and/or ratify interim EPAs, and this has compromised the ability of the EU to finalise full EPAs. This does demonstrate that even despite the asymmetry at the heart of the process, there is some (albeit rather limited) scope for African states to provide some resistance. They have certainly been much more reluctant to agree to full EPAs than the Caribbean region. However, this negative resistance is very unlikely to translate into a complete rethink of the whole concept of EPAs, which the EU remains committed to. In sum, what this chapter demonstrates is that the external constraints to African agency do vary, depending on their specificity. It can be argued that the

64   S. R. Hurt growth of multilateralism, coupled with the rise of emerging powers, has created new spaces for African agency in the international system. In the realm of trade, such openings have, on occasion, been successfully exploited. However, a simple reading of Africa’s improving material capabilities does not necessarily translate into significant agency in the realm of international trade negotiations, especially when they are conducted at a bilateral level with a major trading power (in this case, the EU). This is because world trade takes place in a context that is shaped by historical structures. If we understand ‘agency’ as the ability to meaningfully shape the ideational and material structures of the global political economy, then in the politics of international trade, the vast majority of African states continue to face significant constraints.

Acknowledgements I am very grateful to William Brown and Sophie Harman for their constructive feedback during the process of revising the initial version of this chapter. I am also indebted to Dr Mikko Kuisma, my colleague at Oxford Brookes University, for his helpful suggestions for the section on ‘understanding agency’. I would also like to thank all the participants of the ESRC Seminar Series on ‘African agency in international politics’, especially those who attended the final seminar at the University of Stellenbosch, where an earlier version of this chapter was presented.

Notes 1 In September 2012, the European Parliament voted to extend the deadline proposed by the European Commission to 1 January 2016. At the time of writing, this required ratification by the European Council, but this was expected to be a formality. 2 These eligibility criteria include making progress on a number of areas, including: ‘establishing . . . market-­based economies; the rule of law and political pluralism; elimination of barriers to U.S. trade and investment; protection of intellectual property’. Full details are available at: www.agoa.gov/AGOAEligibility/index.asp (accessed 20 October 2011). 3 Personal interview with an official at DG Development, Brussels, 27 April 2009. 4 Personal interview with Karin Ulmer (APRODEV), Brussels, 28 April 2009. 5 Personal interview with an official at DG Trade, Brussels, 29 April 2009. 6 Personal interview with Karin Ulmer (APRODEV), Brussels, 28 April 2009. 7 Personal interview with an official at DG Development, Brussels, 27 April 2009. 8 Personal interview with Karin Ulmer (APRODEV), Brussels, 28 April 2009. 9 The other African states likely to be affected, according to the Commission’s proposal, are Burundi, Comoros, Lesotho, Mozambique, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda and Zambia, who, as LDCs, would qualify for the EU’s EBA scheme, together with Cameroon, Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Swaziland and Zimbabwe, who would qualify for the revised GSP proposed for 2014, due to their status as low-­income or lower middle-­ income countries.

5 Back to business? UK policy and African agency Tom Cargill

The recent history of United Kingdom (UK) engagement with regards to Africa offers some useful insights as to the changing nature and extent of African agency. This chapter examines some of these engagements, particularly as they relate to UK Government policy and civil society activism, questioning the extent to which UK policy has impacted African agency and, conversely, asking whether African actors have impacted UK policy towards Africa.1 In this context, agency is defined simply as the capacity, as a matter of deliberate policy, to exert political influence externally. The UK itself retains considerable agency with regards to Africa, yet the degree to which UK governments have chosen to exercise that agency has, until recently, been minimal. At the start of the twenty-­first century, this appeared to change, largely with the expressed objective of using UK agency largely altruistically, with regards to Africa, in support of greater African agency. This UK objective is also now changing, on the basis that it has been, at least partially, met and that the rationale upon which it was based – that the UK could afford such an objective and that Africa could, and should, offer little in return – is no longer the case. Whether this change heralds a return to an old narrative of exploitation or a new era of greater African agency is a question that flows throughout this book, but will be at least partially addressed from the UK perspective in this chapter. One fundamental change that has taken place is the emergence of a growing number of aspiring regional and global powers seeking economic and political relationships with African states. This, in itself, makes a return to old patterns unlikely in the short term, as African states face growing choice over which international alliances to pursue. Yet this chapter will argue that UK agency, with regards to Africa, in many respects remains strong and is unlikely to decline precipitously in the foreseeable future.

Why does the UK matter for African agency? The UK’s continued disproportionate importance for African agency emanates largely from the decaying, and yet still potent, afterglow of the UK’s imperial past. This continued importance is perhaps disguised by the scale of its loss of influence throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Yet the UK

66   T. Cargill remains influential from a governmental and multilateral institutional point of view – through the UK’s continued permanent membership of the UN Security Council and the activist role it seeks to play across a large number of international issues. At least as important are the significant numbers of influential civil society campaign groups with global mandates which operate out of the UK, many with a particular focus on Africa.2 The international news media, too, has a disproportionate presence in the UK – London, in particular – with most English language services producing a significant proportion, if not the majority, of their Africa-­related content out of the UK.3 In addition, the influence of UK-­ based academic thought on Africa-­related issues remains disproportionate, with the UK producing the second largest source of journals and news sources with a specific Africa focus after the US, though if this is narrowed down to quality sources with a political focus and relatively wide international readership, the UK has more than any other country.4 The relationships that UK-­based academic institutions enjoy across Africa are also significant. The international role of the City of London, and the influence it continues to exert on international legal, business, financial and regulatory practice, has considerable impact on Africa. For instance, the Government of China has, for some time, been considering using UK law as the basis for all Chinese commercial engagements in Africa. Finally, the increasing prominence in the UK of people with immediate African backgrounds and/or strong family connections in Africa is, in the longer term, perhaps most important of all (Kyambi 2005). Members of these communities, which are increasingly deeply rooted and influential in British cultural, political and economic life, are also increasingly important and assertive actors in bilateral relations in funding political objectives, developmental programmes and commercial operations in various African countries – both individually and specifically as UK-­based groups. This has added to the importance of a growing number of British cities as fundraising destinations for ambitious politicians from across Africa. All of these sources – governmental, civil society, media, academic and the City – are supported by, and in turn support, the widespread employment of UK citizens in positions of influence throughout international, and internationally focused, organisations, which tend, whether they are financial, campaigning, political, journalistic or other, to collectively have a higher degree of influential interaction with, and on, states in Africa than elsewhere. The impact that this has, and the extent to which it is in support of, UK influence per se is hard to demonstrate, but is profound.5 In all of these ways, the UK still has a considerable ability to affect African agency in international politics. Yet, for a period from around the 1970s until the beginning of the twenty-­first century, when many aspects of agency were far stronger than they are today, this agency was not exercised to any significant degree on the part of the UK Government. The reasons for this are varied, but cluster around a historically rooted moralism in UK engagement in Africa. Julia Gallagher writes of ‘doing good in Africa’ as being a particular feature of the post-­ 1997 Labour governments under Tony Blair (Gallagher 2011). This tendency

Back to business?   67 p­ recluded a view of Africa as being comparable to other parts of the world, instead imposing an exceptionalist, largely uniform and paternalistic approach to Africa amongst the UK decision-­making elite, which sought to simultaneously protect and save Africans, both from themselves and from outside influence. This tendency dominated, in different ways, political Left-­wing and Right-­wing views reinforced by, and reinforcing, the peripheral role that Africa played, for the most part, in UK and broader Western policy and business considerations throughout the Cold War and its immediate aftermath. Official UK policy, for its part, remained, post-­1960s, dominated by concerns with colonial legacy issues, such as apartheid, and Cold War policy calculations that left little room or incentive for a more complex engagement. Popular resistance and protest at these policies often focused on the corrupting relationship between official UK aid and national interests and the role that UK companies played in supporting these relationships. So in the context of the immediate memories of the exploitative nature of much colonial-­era commercial engagement, the considerable, if declining, influence that the UK maintained on Africa was severely restricted in its operation, both by the legacy of that exploitation and popular reactions against it.

UK Africa policy under Blair By the mid-­1990s, the importance of more active altruistic state support for international development, divorced from self-­interested foreign policy objectives, was one of the few remaining near consensus issues for the Labour Left, and all the more important for that, as the party leadership made the transition to New Labour. When New Labour won the 1997 election, there were rearguard attempts to retain some Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) influence over development policy, and Clare Short was initially reluctant when asked to take on the new Department for International Development (DFID).6 However, her demand that it retain complete independence as a Cabinet-­level department of state ensured that the establishment of DFID was a landmark act of the new government, perhaps the last significant extension of UK welfarism in the spirit of the 1945–1951 Labour Government. By the time of Labour’s 1997 election victory, UK Government involvement in Africa was so limited that there was little reaction from African leaders. Inevitably, there was uncertainty over the implications of the establishment of DFID as a new department separate from the FCO, but much of the continent was too consumed with other challenges to pay much attention. Indeed, for the first year or so, the lack of interest seemed justified, as UK policy in Africa remained broadly the same as it had been under the previous Conservative administration: lukewarm support for UK trade and business interests that requested it and minimal political interventions. On conflict in Sierra Leone and dictatorship in Nigeria, the UK fell in with the general Commonwealth consensus; as regards the Eritrea–Ethiopia border conflict, the UK toed the UN line. Concerning Zimbabwe, too, nothing seemed to change initially, with President Mugabe saying that he expected a continuation in policy from the previous Conservative administration (Pan African News Agency 1997).

68   T. Cargill The first indication of a more robust liberal interventionist approach to Africa came in British policy towards Sierra Leone and subsequent military intervention in May 2000. The intervention was successful, in that it brought the stability, security and coercion needed to end the endemic violence in that country (Williams 2001). However, it was perhaps indicative, too, of the Blair Government’s desire to cut through convention and precedent to reach an immediate policy aim, without sufficient sensitivity to the complexity of the underlying situation and its historical and legal context. As far back as May 1998, Blair had expressed irritation at criticisms from the High Commissioner to Sierra Leone, Peter Penfold, over the ‘arms to Sierra Leone’ affair, describing it as ‘hoo-­ha’ compared to the ‘superb job’ that Peter Penfold had done in dealing with the consequences of the Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (AFRC) coup in May 1997 (The Independent 1998). The intervention was also, sub­ sequently, an example of spin and the rewriting of history, for despite being used repeatedly as an example of a successful and bold liberal intervention, it was never planned as such – instead developing as a mission creep after a series of events that commenced when a small British force sent to evacuate UK nationals helped Nigerian United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL) peacekeepers repel a rebel attack on the airport where they were based. However it started, and however successful the military intervention was, such bold and unilateral action deserved the kind of bureaucratic capacity and sustained high-­level political follow-­up that was so often lacking in policy subsequently. Significantly, Sierra Leone still exhibits many of the social divisions that contributed to the traumatic conflict, despite over ten years of high-­level interventionist UK engagement (Cargill 2008). It is understandable that the intervention was fully utilised for domestic and international UK purposes (including in support of intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq), but the extent to which this was not always matched by continued high-­level political engagement on Sierra Leone itself raises the question as to what extent the intervention supported greater Sierra Leoneon, as opposed to UK, agency. The tension inherent in the Labour Government’s heartfelt desire to ‘do good in Africa’, without necessarily understanding the care and resources required to do so effectively, was a recurring theme. It was in Zimbabwe that this contradiction was first identified and most ruthlessly exploited by President Mugabe – one of the more adept and experienced political tacticians on a continent with more than its fair share of gifted political operators. Mugabe, losing domestic support and under pressure to support and justify increasing land invasions from veterans and their families angry at the slow pace of land reform, received a gift in the form of Peter Hain, who was appointed Minister in the FCO with responsibility for African affairs in 1999. Hain appeared to be seized with the conviction that, as a former high-­profile activist against apartheid, he could understand and speak out for the interests of Africans and, what is more, was mandated to do so, given his position. From the very beginning, Hain took an uncompromising line with regards to corruption and reform in Africa. Speaking at Wilton Park in September 1999, Hain said:

Back to business?   69 We will not support corrupt governments. We will not subsidise economic mismanagement. We will not fund repression or bankroll dictatorship. And we will not back failure. We will speak out against it and do all we can to help ordinary African people establish the rights and the future to which they are entitled. (Hain 1999) The problem was not so much with the message, but with the inherent image problem, from an African perspective, of a former colonial power appearing to unilaterally demand the mantle of champion for Africans. Hain personalised this, with his first words in the same speech being: At dawn in Soweto, South Africa, in 1994, the queue stretched far out of sight. Emotions welled up inside me as I watched people voting for the first time in their lives. Something of the same feeling is with me today, standing before you as ‘Britain’s Minister for Africa’ setting out my strategy for a new partnership with Africa. Why? Because I am a son of Africa, born under the African sky in Nairobi and brought up in Pretoria. (Hain 1999) This sentiment was symptomatic of a fundamental misunderstanding, which extended beyond Hain to many parts of the Labour Party hierarchy – a legacy of the simplistic, paternalistic approaches to Africa that characterised much protest against colonialism and neocolonialism. They saw themselves as campaigners against international injustice and, being from a political tradition that championed such issues as anti-­racism and Third World solidarity, as being on the side of the victims of oppression, rather than its perpetrators. As such, they did not believe that, once in power, they would be identified internationally as inheritors of the colonial legacy and, by extension, neither could the UK Government. This was summed up in a 1997 letter from Clare Short, newly installed as International Development Secretary, to the Zimbabwe Minister of Land. In it, Short denies that the UK has a special responsibility to meet the cost of land purchases in Zimbabwe (this is before the land invasions). She makes an initial justification of this on the basis that: ‘we are a new Government from diverse backgrounds without links to former colonial interests. My own origins are Irish and as you know we were colonised not colonisers’ (Short 1997). These attitudes understandably irritated many African leaders and others, not least because the claim of not being colonisers was used to justify a high-­handed approach to the complex politics of the continent that appeared to be much like the British neocolonialism that the ministers claimed to reject. Mugabe was able to use this to his advantage, both by claiming – with some popular success – that he was standing up to meddling imperialists and by taunting the Labour Government, in order to provoke further outspoken statements from British ministers (BBC 2000). This tactic was highly successful throughout the key period of the Movement for Democratic Change’s (MDC) major challenge to Zimbabwe

70   T. Cargill African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF ) power in 2000; and it continues to find resonance. It was a major reason for other African leaders finding themselves unable to be as vocally critical of Mugabe as they might otherwise have been.7 This lack of insight certainly enhanced the agency of the Zimbabwean regime, but, as a consequence, it indirectly further reduced, more than might have otherwise been the case, the agency of opposition and many ordinary Zimbabweans. It was indicative, too, more generally, of the perverse unintended consequences that could arise from such emotive policymaking. It bolstered those elites, who were in many ways responsible for the challenges that such policies were intended to overcome, and it failed to satisfactorily engage with either civil society, on the one hand, or the continent-­wide institutions, on the other. The latter were far more likely to deliver the transformative change that UK policy aspired to support. This was a theme that was to continue throughout both the UK Labour and subsequent Conservative-­led coalition governments.

‘The world must judge us on Africa’: the Commission for Africa and the G8 Tony Blair wrote ‘the world must judge us on Africa’ in an article for the British press, marking a visit to South Africa in February 2006 (Blair 2006). This statement followed his identification of African development as a key objective of Britain’s presidency of the G8 and European Union in 2005. Blair’s personal commitment to Africa should not be doubted. During the 2001 election campaign, he promised to make Africa more of a priority in his second term. The perfect opportunity presented itself to him when he was approached by Mbeki and Obasanajo at the 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa. It was these leaders who, along with the President Bouteflika of Algeria and, a little later, Wade of Senegal, set out to engage with G8 leaders during the 2000 Okinawa Summit and the 2001 Genoa Summit in support of new commitments to encourage growth across Africa in return for greater reform efforts amongst African leaders themselves (Cargill 2010). The New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) was the result, with Blair quickly won over by the charisma and drive of Mbeki, in particular. Shortly afterwards, he gave a speech to the Labour Party conference, in which, despite this conference taking place in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, he devoted a significant section to Africa, calling it ‘a scar on the conscience of the world’ (Blair 2001). Subsequently, there has been much criticism of this speech and the passive victimhood that this phrase especially conferred on Africa. Yet what is overlooked is the earlier reference to ‘a partnership for Africa’, in language that closely followed that of NEPAD and the related Africa Action Plan, which was emerging at the time, driven by the leaders of NEPAD. In this sense, while the language may have offered a passive view of Africa, the speech itself was very much the result of an active international diplomatic strategy by African leaders. It was their lobbying that convinced Blair to make Africa a priority for the UK’s 2005 G8 Presidency. During the Sea

Back to business?   71 Island Summit in the US in 2004, Africa attracted a higher profile than expected, due to efficient lobbying by the UK, which the US felt that it owed as an ally, because of the Iraq War (Council on Foreign Relations 2004). Since the Kananaskis Summit in 2002, aid pledges to Africa had significantly increased, and the UK wanted to build upon this record.8 The aim of the Commission for Africa, whose report was launched in 2005, was to take a fresh look at Africa’s past and present and the international community’s role in its development path. The Commission’s creation was timed to seize upon the political and symbolic opportunity that 2005 presented; for that year saw the coincidence of the United Kingdom chairmanship of both the G8 and, in the second half of the year, the European Union. The Prime Minister made Africa, together with climate change, the focus of both. In September 2005, the UN convened the first major summit to review the implementation of the UN Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). It was 2005 that was also the twentieth anniversary of Live Aid and the twenty-­fifth anniversary of the publication of the seminal Brandt Commission Report ‘North–South’. From the very beginning, the Commission was linked by Prime Minister Blair to the influential 1980 Brandt Report, credited with placing north–south relations onto the international agenda. Yet questions persisted, regarding the nature and purpose of the Commission. Its stated aim was to create a report and a set of proposals containing ‘new and radical thinking’ on how to develop Africa, but to what extent this would be differentiated from official UK foreign policy was left deliberately open. The composition of the Commission was challenged from the outset for including individuals such as Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi. South Africa’s Finance Minister, Trevor Manuel, sat on the Commission more as a gesture mandated by President Thabo Mbeki for improving bilateral relations which had been badly impacted on over Zimbabwe and Iraq, than as a signal of real African buy-­in.9 An initial draft of the report was to be delivered to Commissioners in mid-­ October for a meeting in Addis Ababa, but, by the start of the month, hardly any consultations in Africa had taken place, and many UK groups were only just being invited to submit their own ideas. As a result, before almost any Africans had their say on what the report should be composed of, the framework was set. It was this failure to bring on-­board groups from across the continent itself that again caused problems for the Commission, and this sense of disconnect from initiatives already taking place in Africa was reinforced when the Prime Minister gave a keynote address on Africa in Addis Ababa in November, without once mentioning NEPAD – the key initiative to which the African Union (AU) and African governments had committed themselves (Blair 2004). The Commission and, by extension, the UK Government was by now developing a reputation for itself as being loftily out of touch – an image not helped when a major figure in the Commission reportedly claimed at a dinner for senior international diplomats that 2005 would be the year when ‘Africa was discovered on the international agenda’.10 Such thinking was reflected again in Blair’s February 2006 interview in South Africa, where he claimed that: ‘I think the G8 last year was the first time Africa has come centre stage for the G8 Summit’ (Mnet 2006).

72   T. Cargill Meanwhile, hurried consultation exercises were taking place across Africa, as well as in other G8 countries. Yet, for many, it felt like a cosmetic exercise to legitimise a report already basically drafted by the Secretariat. Entitled Our Common Interest, the 461-page report was a cogent summary of existing ideas on what is required to boost growth and good governance across Africa (Commission for Africa 2005). However, the lack of new and original thinking was in contradiction with the originally proclaimed central purpose of the Commission, which was to consider Africa from a fresh perspective (Hurt 2007). The Commission Report’s main prescription was to emphasise the importance of governance and aid for African recovery, something that the World Bank had already been saying for a decade (Brown 2006b). The Commission Report also asserted that more aid would lead to better governance and that the G8 and international multilateral organisations were key to recovery, rather than what African countries do for themselves (Mills 2005). It was striking that, although probably the most substantive efforts at consultation were by businesses, there was no reference to the importance of the private sector in Africa at the launch. This emphasised the vision of Blair, Gordon Brown and Bob Geldof – that this was a charitable exercise. The emphasis was not on supporting African agency, but rather Western agency for Africa.

From Labour to Conservative-­led coalition The general humanitarian thrust of UK policy on Africa did not change under Gordon Brown’s premiership, though that thrust had inevitably weakened since the high point of the UK G8 in 2005 and weakened further still as the mounting financial crisis and leadership issues sucked in ever more of the Brown Government’s attention. The changed ministerial teams in DFID and the FCO appeared content to allow both departments to continue doing what they had been doing; the only serious clash occurring when DFID attempted to undertake more political analyses of the challenges facing developing countries, something that was strenuously resisted by Foreign Secretary David Miliband in a move that represented Whitehall village politics at its worst, given widespread frustration at DFID’s inability to engage with politics.11 The establishment of DFID in 1997 had proven to be the start of a reinvigorated UK approach to Africa after decades of decline in government interest. Yet, as argued above, that approach had been, for the most part, fairly one-­ dimensional: focusing on Africa as a place to ‘do good’ (Gallagher 2011). The FCO, on the other hand, had steadily dwindled in size and importance, with regards to UK policy on Africa. From 2005, in particular, the need for cost cutting to compensate for the high costs of British engagement in Iraq and the review of security of British diplomatic and aid missions abroad contributed towards a 20 per cent decline in personnel. Diplomatic missions in Mali, Lesotho, Swaziland and Madagascar were closed and a number of other embassies downsized, positions merged or downgraded, including the closure of the Consulate General in Douala. The removal of foreign exchange protection and

Back to business?   73 other measures in the face of the financial crisis from 2008 onwards weakened FCO capacity further, whilst DFID’s budget, if not its head count, was protected and steadily increased in pursuit of the 0.7 per cent of GDP target that it had been committed to in 2005 (Cargill 2011). Labour’s period in office coincided with the ‘long decade’ of growth and reform in Africa. Even before the 2010 UK election, the near-­consensus that had been achieved in the UK and beyond across development organisations, DFID and some of the most influential parts of academia, regarding what was desirable and achievable as far as development policy was concerned, was being questioned. This was not least due to the perception, rightly or wrongly, that African states were now in a better position to define their own developmental needs. However, it also arose from the growing criticism that the role of the private sector as a driver of development had been neglected, to say the least. Under Labour, there was still a strong sense from DFID, supported by ministers and a significant section, if not the majority, of UK opinion-­formers amongst NGOs and the news media, that the private sector was something of a necessary evil, as regards to development in Africa. This sense was bolstered by widely reported corporate scandals involving Western companies, such as the corruption cases involving BAE Systems in South Africa and Tanzania, the Trafigura waste-­ dumping case in Côte d’Ivoire and the ongoing scandal of the oil mismanagement, corruption and pollution in the Niger Delta. These cases, appearing to conform to all the worst stereotypes of Western corporate behaviour, were well-­ covered by the UK media, as was increasing Chinese investment, in negative – and often racially tinged – terms of exploitation. This contrasted with the lack of coverage of the underlying story of economic growth across Africa. It all pointed to the strength of the underlying UK cultural narrative on Africa as Gallagher’s essentially passive ‘sacred space’, which all of the activities around the G8 and the Commission for Africa had done little to change and much to sustain. However, the tone set by the government, at least, was to change dramatically under the new Conservative-­led coalition that came to power in June 2011. In the run-­up to the election, the Conservatives had surprised some, even within their own party, by committing to the 0.7 per cent of GDP target for development assistance and the protection of DFID’s Cabinet status. Yet the Conservative leadership considered this commitment an important way of attracting wavering centre-­ground voters, and their private polling continued to show that it is an important factor in support amongst women voters, in particular. There is also a case based on national interest, with perceptions that the UK’s soft power is enhanced by international respect for UK development policy and that it helps to promote and protect emerging and prospective UK trade interests. The other fundamental change to impact UK policy on Africa since the 2010 election was the desire to put the FCO back to the forefront of UK policymaking towards Africa. Because the FCO rarely took Africa seriously (with the exception of South Africa and Rhodesia/Zimbabwe), when DFID was created in 1997, it quickly and effectively took over UK policy towards Africa, with DFID

74   T. Cargill country heads across Africa often replacing ambassadors as the principle bilateral link. This caused problems, not least from African governments resenting being treated differently than sovereign governments elsewhere in the world. In some cases, the FCO and DFID appeared to run separate, and sometimes competing, diplomatic strategies. This changed dramatically under the new coalition government, with ambassadors and high commissioners expected to coordinate both diplomatic and development policy in a way that they never had to previously. It is this that has reinvigorated concerns about the relationship between narrow UK interests, development objectives and trade in a way not apparent since the creation of DFID back in 1997.

Africa’s changing international role and UK engagement The long decade of growth across Africa (described above), which was responsible for driving the change in UK policy, was affected by the global financial crisis. Yet, to the surprise of many observers, the direct economic impacts were far less severe than in previous crises, and Africa was the only continent not to suffer negative growth. The political impacts, however, were far more significant. A combination of increasing stability through reduced conflict and often fairly limited and basic improvements in governance had been responsible for much of the improvement seen across Africa since the 1990s, in the context of increasing commodity prices and the growing availability of cheap Chinese consumer goods (Khan 2012). With the initial gains made possible by these changing circumstances largely exhausted by 2008, it was becoming apparent that continued growth would, in many cases, depend upon much tougher choices and more deep-­seated reforms. Prior to the financial crisis, there was greater consensus on the types of reforms required and stronger influence amongst those international institutions and Western countries likely to prescribe the reforms, whether they would have worked or not. But 2008 saw much of the consensus that would have fed into the inevitable World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF ) and Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development (OECD) donor advice to African governments thrown into the air. It is still unclear where, if anywhere, such consensus will re-­emerge. Several things flowed on from the crises and have impacted on the nature and direction of economic and governance reforms in a contradictory manner. Some have boosted the confidence of African leaders. Western countries, and associated institutions and perspectives, have suffered a major loss of prestige and confidence. The visceral exposure of the corruption, collusion and incompetence that led to the crash erased much of the moral authority and claim to competence that Western policymakers had previously traded on. Related to this point, the financial crisis was a serious blow to the advance of a common understanding of the role of development assistance. This agenda included the desirability of non-­ tied aid; the separation of development from foreign policy; the aspiration to reach 0.7 per cent of GDP committed to development assistance; the selective use of conditionality and other aspects. In fact, these sets of ideas have proved

Back to business?   75 more resilient than may have been expected. Even in the UK, with its shift from Labour to a Conservative-­led coalition, the government remained committed to most of this agenda, though in the face of considerable opposition from its own members of parliament (MPs). Elsewhere in Europe, this agenda is now subject to serious equivocation and reversals, with France, Italy and Germany retreating from commitments made at the 2005 Gleneagles G8 Summit. Funding shortfalls and more hostile public perceptions of aid have blunted much advocacy campaigning on this issue. The US, for its part, may, in fact, be continuing to advance aspects of this agenda under Barack Obama with a reinvigorated United States Agency for International Development (USAID) department, but there are political limits to possible progress, given the US domestic attachment to tied-­ aid and unilateralism. The rise of the G20 had already called into question the Western dominance of development policy, as had the re-­emergence of China. For good or ill, the financial crisis arrested Western aspirations to be leaders in development, whether permanently or not is still unclear. Yet this boosted the confidence of African policymakers at a time when many new partners were emerging around the world, not just China, India and Brazil, but also Turkey, South Korea, Mexico and Indonesia – indeed, anyone who wants access to new markets and resources for their companies and the support of African states (over 25 per cent of the UN) for any number of positions, agreements or votes. This confidence is further heightened, because Africa in general did not go into recession in the crisis, though many economies struggled and continue to do so. The praise, which African Finance Ministers received for their general handling of the crisis, was a big boost. It gave many actors the reassurance that they need no longer be patronised by Europeans and North Americans concerning what was in African interests. Yet the crisis, whilst boosting many African elites, has arguably weakened the voice of those concerned with social justice and human rights by reducing, temporarily at least, the amount of time that Western policy actors wish to think about Africa, which, although growing in prominence, was not high on their list of priorities. This has coincided with a significant drop in media and policy interest in Africa-­related issues. Campaigning NGOs, such as Oxfam and Amnesty International, have also struggled to raise issues of concern. When policymakers do think about Africa, issues of governance are increasingly challenged by trade promotion and strategic interest. The fallout from the Arab Spring has complicated this a little, but generally, trade is now much more important a consideration than it was. This tendency is amplified by the loss of credibility and confidence on governance issues described above. Despite this dramatic shift in global influence, relationships between much of Africa and Europe, especially the UK, remain deep and complex. All of the above trends – the crisis, loss of Western confidence and interest in Africa, the emergence of new partners and the absence of consensus on a way forward – are challenging African states as to their identity and affinities, especially with regards to former colonial powers and the US. Beyond all the anger, grievance,

76   T. Cargill rhetoric of resistance and schadenfreude at seeing Western loss of pride and prestige, the links between Africa and these Western countries remain strong and with increasing migration, use of IT and generational change, in many respects, these links are growing stronger, not weaker. What does all this mean for African agency? Most importantly, African states are increasingly aware of, and interested in, utilising the expanding choice of relationships confronting them. Often, it is true, this interest continues to appear to translate into a regime survival strategy of playing various foreign powers off against each other. Yet increasingly, as African states have developed greater capacity and sense of direction over the past decade, these balance of power strategies are being used to pursue more national objectives. This tendency has been hastened by the emergence of a growing number of states around the world that wish to pursue a more assertive global political and economic role and wish to build political alliances and economic partnerships with African states in pursuit of this goal. Angola and Mozambique are good examples of this, having consciously sought a diversity of bilateral relations to secure the best economic, as well as political, deals. Rwanda has also done so within its very specific context (Vines et al. 2009; Beswick 2011; also, see chapters by Beswick and Grimm in this volume). Such choice enables African states to exert greater agency by picking and choosing amongst such suitors and it lessens, to a degree, dependency upon former colonial powers and Western donors and their particular governance agendas. Yet, although this growing awareness of choice has translated into greater agency on a national level, it is still unclear as to whether, despite recent progress, Africa has done so at a regional and continental level, as demonstrated by the failure of the AU to present a coherent position during the Libya crisis and subsequent NATO intervention.

Conclusion The Libya intervention shows, in some sense, how little things have changed, with regards to Africa’s agency. The AU had little alternative but to appeal to international law to support their policy and protested impotently when it did not do so. Western states, the UK prominent amongst them, utilised those same laws in pursuit of their own policies (which, they would argue, represent common interests) and were able to override objections to their actions. African agency remains limited. UK agency remains extensive. Yet the NATO intervention was an exceptional episode in recent UK–Africa engagements. Bilateral relations continue to dominate and, within them, aid and, increasingly, trade continue to be the major concerns in the relationship between the UK and Africa. In one important area, this has translated into greater African agency, for while the UK Government might deny it, issues of human rights and governance cannot be quite so forcefully raised as they once were, when purely developmental and humanitarian interests predominated. Moves by the UK to establish regular human rights reporting and a unit on combating sexual violence may prove this wrong, but the February 2012 hosting by UK Foreign Minister Henry Bellingham of a UK–Eritrea trade forum

Back to business?   77 with the Eritrean Foreign Minister and UK business representatives, at a time when Eritrea is both suspended from the AU and under UN sanctions for serious violations of international law, suggests otherwise. Whether such renewed agency on the part of African states is a good or bad thing is beyond the scope of this chapter, but it is a challenge to the UK’s historical self-­defined moral mission in Africa. The case of Eritrea exposes some of the tensions in such an approach, but in bilateral relations with more democratically accountable governments, such as Ghana or Tanzania, a thicker relationship involving more than just development assistance and advice on human rights and governance from the UK may be more desirable. A key question that flows from this is whether the UK gives up the agency it sought to exert over human rights and governance issues willingly. If it does, then, arguably, the agency gained by African states as a result is less significant: it can be removed at any time, given a change of policy in the UK. However, the increasing choice of relationships facing African states suggests that the decline in UK influence over such issues is not completely voluntary. While it may be too early to say, as many African elites would like to, that the UK and other Western relationships can now be easily replaced with alternative alliances, it is an increasingly real prospect that they will be. The UK will then need to reconcile this growing tension between its self-­perceived moral mission and its declining capacity to pursue it. On one level, this may simply signal the return to ‘business as usual’. Until 1997, official UK policy had a patchy record, at best, of attempting to enforce standards of good governance across Africa. Trade and political imperatives generally prevailed. Since 1997, there has been a growing focus on human rights and governance, but while, for a short period, the fading glow of unipolarity and the resources that the DFID could wield meant African states had to pay lip service to its exhortations, the extent to which reforms made across the continent can be traced to UK agency via development assistance on a bilateral level is far from clear. Where the UK did, and could, continue, for better or worse, to play a moral role is in multilateral forums, such as the G8 and G20. On balance, the UK’s and Tony Blair’s activism on Africa within the G8 – however contradictory in its motives and consequences – probably did make a contribution to supporting the efforts of reformist African leaders such as Mbeki, Obasanjo and others, which, in turn, helped entrench the past ten years of economic and political reforms seen across Africa. The contradiction is that in intervening in Libya, it is through another such multilateral institution – NATO – that the UK rebuffed the very agency it had contributed to fostering in pursuit of a different self-­ proclaimed ‘moral’ agenda. On this multilateral level, then, greater African agency still appears to be contingent or dependent upon the voluntary ceding of influence by, amongst others, the UK. It is probably not coincidental that the AU’s humiliation over Libya took place long after Mbeki and Obasanjo had moved on. There are no longer the powerful unifying voices in the continent that there once were, and there are not yet the institutions required to replace them. So, on a bilateral level, African states are gaining greater agency in relation to their engagements with

78   T. Cargill the UK, where both sides are seeking more transactional relationships, whilst both on a multilateral level, where the issues addressed are more strategic and moral and, in many cases, at the level of civil society, the African voice is still weak. The UK, meanwhile, retains a powerful and privileged voice across the most significant multilateral forums. The fundamental change required to alter this balance – reform of global governance structures, including the UN – is unlikely to take place in the foreseeable future. However, greater efforts among Africans to develop strong, popular regional institutions may offer a partial solution. The UK Government remains committed to supporting such efforts. The dilemma and test for both UK and African agency would be presented were such UK-­supported African institutions to come into real conflict with UK interests.

Notes   1 This chapter draws on two previous papers by the author – Cargill, T. (2006), ‘Le monde doit nous juger sur l’Afrique: l’héritage Africain de Tony Blair’ (with Alex Vines), Politique Africaine, 101 (March/April): 132–147; Cargill, T. (2007), ‘Tony Blair and the United Kingdom’s Africa policy’, in South African Institute of International Affairs (ed.), South African Yearbook of International Affairs 2006/7, Johannesburg: SAIIA, pp. 323–335.   2 Bond, the umbrella group for UK-­based INGOs, has 358 members, whereas Interaction, its US equivalent, has 190.   3 These include CNN, Al Jazeera, BBC, Thompson Reuters and Dow Jones, amongst others.   4 An analysis of the most comprehensive list of Africa-­related periodicals available from the Stanford online catalogue reveals 120 to be US-­based, 82 to be Africa-­based, 67 to be UK-­based, 47 to be France-­based, 16 to be Germany-­based and 65 to be based elsewhere.   5 The insistence by the US and Europe on reserving leadership of the World Bank and IMF, respectively, for their own citizens is a testament to this.   6 Interview, senior UK Government official, London, February 2006.   7 Interview, Southern African Government official, London, June 2010.   8 Interview, UK DFID officials, London, February 2005.   9 Interview, senior ex-­British diplomat, London, 10 February 2006. 10 Interview, German diplomat, London, February 2005. 11 Interview, UK Government official, March 2010.

Part II

Agency New modes, new sites

6 Aid dependency as a limitation to national development policy? The case of Rwanda Sven Grimm

Almost all African states receive significant development assistance from Western donors, often amounting to more than 10 per cent of the gross national income (GNI). In addition to Western donors, aid funding comes from numerous other development partners, including multilateral organisations or other bilateral actors, such as emerging economies, not least China. The administrative effort of dealing with the multitude of development partners overburdens government bureaucracies, leading to a decline in the quality of governance (Brautigam 2000). In many African countries in the 1990s, aid was provided by ‘some thirty official donors in addition to several dozen international NGOs [. . .] through over a thousand distinct projects and several hundred resident foreign experts’ (Van de Walle 2001: 58). The number of donors resulted in many missions and a high reporting requirement, with as many as 684 aid instruments in Uganda and around 400 missions a year to Vietnam, to give but two examples (Faust and Messner 2010: 265). Each of these actors comes with their own priorities and intervention rationales. In this context, it is evident that the recent engagement of emerging economies as donors adds to the existing complexity of the aid system, increasing both the number of donors and the variety of modal­ ities and instruments used. Yet aid-­dependent African governments are usually discussed as having little strategic planning capacity (or political will) to manage these intervening external agendas. In addition to the sheer number of donor institutions, the variety of modalities and conditionalities lead to unpredictable flows and insufficient flexibility in the use of aid, leaving governments of developing countries unable to establish long-­term development plans for their countries (Hayman 2009). Within this complex setting, developing countries (or, rather, their respective governments) are, by definition, the far less well-­resourced entities. In other words, African agency is severely limited by external dependency. Here, agency will be understood as the ability to wilfully determine and pursue one’s own priorities, including the ability to reject external ideas. Our case study, Rwanda, is admittedly a very special case, due to its recent history of genocide and lack of (adequate) external intervention in the course of the genocide. The historical experience of Rwanda’s current elite, of being ‘on their own’ during the existential crisis in 1994, has arguably added to a mindset

82   S. Grimm of independence from, if not hostility towards, the donor community. Aid agencies, including not least the UN, were regarded as having provided shelter for the very people who planned and carried out genocide in refugee camps in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and elsewhere, whereas support to the devastated country came more slowly, as official interviewees in Rwanda highlighted. Donor pressure on the Rwandan Government – for instance, for less top-­down policy formulation – is thus met with a very particular scepticism. This chapter will explore how Rwanda exercises agency in a complicated setting of a multitude of development partners, on which the state is highly dependent. The material for this chapter was collected during a three-­month stay in Rwanda in early 2010 and includes evidence from around 80 interviews. While countries like China claim that their interaction is conceptually different from Western donors, their claims of special treatment may, in fact, create new problems. What are the perceptions (and strategies) of African governments in their engagement with these actors?

The Rwandan setting – aid dependency at high levels Total aid included in the national government budget amounted to slightly more than half of the national finance in 2009.1 Rwanda is thus, obviously, a highly aid-­dependent country, with development cooperation playing an important role. In recent years, aid has accounted for around one-­fifth of GNI.2 The increase in GNI outstrips the increase in official development assistance (ODA), from US$581 million in 2006 to US$931 million in 2008.3 Nonetheless, the figure of 21 per cent of the GNI given as aid demonstrates the persistence of Rwanda’s high aid dependency. Beyond the mere size of aid flows, the modalities of the external engagement also matters when we look at the agency of African states. Despite the general consistency in the amount of external aid to Rwanda, the nature of external funds has undergone considerable changes since the 1990s. The post-­genocide period was marked by a high influx of emergency aid into the region. Following a transitional period in the late 1990s, this situation changed, and a growing share of aid flows were channelled into long-­term projects and, subsequently, budget support (Hayman 2009: 584–585). Budget support – despite its false reputation as a ‘blank cheque’ to a government – comes with agreed targets (ex-­postconditionality) that need to be met and is subject to ex-­ante governance conditions in the recipient country, not least so regarding an assessment of the trustworthiness of public finance management. Dependence on whom – who is providing aid to Rwanda? Donors are operating in a crowded environment in Rwanda, and the scarce resources of the small country are potentially stretched when coordinating donors, as previously mentioned. But who is operating, and to what extent, in Rwanda? The first difficulty encountered is the lack of a unified, reliable and

Rwanda: aid dependency and agency   83 comprehensive database on donor activities. In general, data on budget support is quite easy to track in Rwanda. Project-­based aid flows to Rwanda, however, are more difficult to assess: data of the Rwandan Government’s database (CEPEX) is considered to be incomplete and not entirely accurate. Even the budget unit in Rwanda’s Ministry of Economic Planning and Finance (MINECOFIN) does not rely on their own data in the budgeting process (Tew 2009: 6). However, a detailed mapping of aid flows to Rwanda, as undertaken by Grimm et al. (2011), represents only an impression of the complete picture. There were 29 bilateral donors engaged in Rwanda in 2010. Out of these, 23 were members of the Development Assistance Committee (DAC) of the Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development (OECD) and six were non-­DAC donors.4 Of the group of DAC donors, Belgium, Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, the US, the UK, Switzerland, Luxemburg, Austria, France, Italy and the two Asian DAC members, Japan and Korea, engaged bilaterally in, and with, Rwanda. Additionally, in the OECD database, Spain, Norway, Portugal, Denmark, Finland, New Zealand, Australia, Greece and Ireland were displayed as being active in the country (compare, also, Tew 2009), operating mostly through non-­governmental organisations (NGOs) or United Nations (UN) agencies; however, they were not represented by an embassy in Rwanda, and projects/programmes of these actors were not encountered on the ground. Out of the list of emerging countries and non-­DAC donors, China, India, South Africa and Egypt were engaged in Rwanda. Additionally, Cuba and Nigeria were involved in sending medical staff to Rwanda, but did not transfer funds. Multilateral agencies present were the World Bank, the African Development Bank (ADB), the European Union (EU), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund), the Nordic Development Fund, several Arab funds (Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa (BADEA), Kuwait Fund, Saudi Fund, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and various UN agencies. This long enumeration does not even list the numerous UN agencies or the multitude of international non-­state actors in Rwanda. The high number of donors might be expected to provide choice, which could be supportive to Rwandan agency. Yet donors come with their own agendas, and aid is concentrated in traditional sectors of development coordination, such as education and health. Other sectors, like manufacturing, services and off-­farm industry or transport and technology promotion, are apparently less popular among donors. Sectors designated as key sectors in the Rwandan poverty reduction strategy, namely education, agriculture and health, turn out to have the largest number of donors engaged, including China and other non-­DAC donors (see Grimm et al. 2011). The activities varied greatly in size. Exercising agency in this setting is not easy: even if any help might be seen as a positive contribution to Rwanda, too diverse an aid tableau might detract attention from defined priorities. Keeping an overview of this setting and channelling aid to priority sectors thus requires substantial skills and knowledge about the national priorities of donors if aid disbursements are not guided by strong

84   S. Grimm domestic policies or priorities of the recipient state. It is easy to start drifting away from recipient needs when following donor priorities and when state elites are accepting any external offer and thus shy away from taking the risk of saying ‘no’ to aid in unsolicited areas. The additional actors: engagement of non-­DAC states in Rwanda Among non-­DAC donors active in Rwanda (as listed above), there were two Asian donors (China and India), Arab donors (BADEA, Kuwait Fund, Saudi Fund, Egypt), Cuba and, as African partners, South Africa and Nigeria. It is difficult to make general statements on the volume of non-­DAC engagement. Nevertheless, it is possible to get a rough impression on the importance of non-­ DAC donors’ engagement with a combination of the CEPEX database and our own estimates. China is certainly the most substantial non-­DAC donor in Rwanda, not only with respect to the financial scope of its development cooperation, but also because of its diverse activities in technical and financial cooperation conducted in different sectors. Chinese engagement is difficult for the Rwandan Government to track in monetary terms, due to the bureaucratic process surrounding information sharing. CEPEX documents suggest a: ‘bilateral engagement [that] should be done to help agree on how to access the information’ (CEPEX 2009: x). In terms of overall financial volume (commitments about US$20 million with sizeable disbursements in 2009, see Table 6.1), China, in absolute size, ranges between Canada, Sweden and Belgium as a donor in the case of Rwanda. India only recently became an important partner for Rwanda. In early 2010, it signed an agreement with the Rwandan Government to finance the construction of the Nyabarongo power plant.5 However, much in line with overall data for Africa (ECOSOC 2008), India is a smaller partner to Rwanda than China and the Arab Funds (when counted together). Although, on first sight, Indian commitments were almost equal to Chinese ones (see Table 6.1), India had not yet started to disburse any funds to Rwanda, as all activities in relation to the Nyabarongo plant were still at the planning stage. At the time of research in Rwanda (2010), it seemed likely that India would become increasingly more important to Rwanda. The mere volume of assistance is arguably not the only decisive factor when it comes to the importance of donors for the Rwandan Government; modalities also matter. A Rwandan government official put it in the following terms: ‘However much money comes in, the fact that we don’t get our hands on it – as is the case with project assistance – makes us not want to rely on it’ (Interview 25 February 2010). It is obviously understood that, as an important feature of agency, the central government should be able to determine as much as possible where (in which province, on which contractors, etc.) money can be used. Any in-­kind assistance will come with limitations, as regards the political – and technical – room for manoeuvre, as material or knowhow will be bound to pre­ defined implementation, rather than just outcome criteria.

Rwanda: aid dependency and agency   85 Table 6.1 Non-Development Assessment Committee (DAC) donor engagement in Rwanda (in US$ million) Donor

Commitments (July 2009–June 2010)

Disbursements (July–December 2009)

Execution rate (%)

China India BADEA Kuwait Fund Saudi Fund OPEC Memo item: Arab Funds total

20.65* 20.57* 10.00 5.10 8.95 8.29 32.34

6.29 0 0.15 0 0.70 0.34 1.19

30.5 0 1.5 0 7.8 4.2 3.38

Source: CEPEX (2010b), calculated based on the average value of the Rwandan Franc (FRW) in USD in 2009. See Grimm et al. (2011). Note * Commitments for calendar year 2009.

Agency in a situation of dependency? The challenge to keep the policy focus The core drive for (re)gaining agency is to be able to set the agenda and, subsequently, to autonomously determine how goals and targets are reached. Under the general circumstances (as outlined above), how does a country the size of Rwanda, with limited strategic importance, exercise agency over its policy in a situation of obvious stark aid dependency? The Rwandan Government’s initiative to coordinate its donors over recent years is a good example of African agency. One driver of this high-­risk behaviour – donors might just leave the country after all – it might be mere chutzpah based on historical experiences, as argued. Playing ‘the guilt card’ about international inactivity during the genocide in Rwanda is, admittedly, not an option for other African states. Yet, only emphasising the uniqueness of the case is unsatisfactory as an explanation. The mechanisms employed when exercising agency in a complex donor setting are not necessarily unique to Rwanda and thus merit a deeper analysis. For instance, emphasising the colonial history – and past cruelties that came with it – is a feature that numerous states can, and certainly do, apply to maintain or regain policy space. An elaborate policy framework: development vision and aid policy Rwanda has elaborated on a series of policy papers and strategies meant as strategic, yet detailed, guidance for the country’s development, which is meant as a reference point for all external support. With explicit reference to the aid effectiveness agenda of Western donors, Rwanda has developed aid policy, i.e. a policy on how to govern incoming aid.

86   S. Grimm The original paramount vision paper, Vision 2020, was the central element of Rwanda’s development strategy (University of Birmingham 2006; Grimm et al. 2011). Vision 2020 provided a long-­term perspective on how to overcome poverty, with the highly ambitious vision of transforming the country into a middle-­income economy by 2020 (MINECOFIN 2000: 25). Vision 2020 included an enumeration of Rwanda’s development challenges: they ranged from land shortage and diminishing agricultural productivity to natural barriers to trade in a landlocked country with poor transport infrastructure and a narrow economic base. Rwanda’s national economy was relying mainly on exports of coffee and tea. Furthermore, the analysis of Vision 2020 saw Rwanda marked by weak institutional capacity, a low level of human resource development and a high level of public debt.6 Finally, the social and economic consequences of genocide were mentioned as a legacy that Rwanda has to cope with (MINECOFIN 2000: 7–8). In the face of these challenges, three major objectives were depicted: the long-­term goal was the creation of a productive middle class by fostering entrepreneurship. In the medium-­term, the vision implied a transformation from a subsistence agricultural economy to a knowledge-­based economy. Third, the short-­term objective aimed at the promotion of macroeconomic stability and wealth creation (MINECOFIN 2000: 9–10). These objectives were further translated into a comprehensive programme based on six pillars: (1) good governance and a capable state; (2) human resource development; (3) private sector development; (4) infrastructure development (transport, energy, water, ICT networks); (5) transformation of the agricultural sector into a productive, high value, market-­oriented sector; and (6) promotion of regional and international economic integration. In addition to these six pillars, Vision 2020 defined three cross-­cutting areas which needed to be fostered in order to strengthen development of the country: gender equality, environmental protection and sustainable resource management, as well as an emphasis on science and technology (MINECOFIN 2000). Below this broader development vision, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP)7 identified the medium-­term strategy. The second generation PRSP for the period from 2008 until 2012, Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (EDPRSP), derived priorities from its analysis leading to three flagship programmes in the areas of job creation, rural development and governance. Moreover, the organisation of development policies also included numerous sector strategies based on Vision 2020, the MDGs and the EDPRSP (see Grimm et al. 2011). In the sector strategies, the priorities were outlined in more detail, indicators were listed and financial projections and resources were named.8 Planning has limitations, of course, as these pillars and cross-­cutting themes, while not necessarily in outright contradiction, were obviously not without internal tensions. Against the background of the situation and the challenges to Rwanda outlined in Vision 2020 and other documents, the goals were, indeed, ambitious – some would say unrealistic – envisaging an increase of per capita income from US$290 in 2000 to US$900 in 2020, while the population is

Rwanda: aid dependency and agency   87 expected to grow from an estimated eight to 16 million during this period (MINECOFIN 2000: 3). In 2007, a GDP per capita reached US$371, the population having grown to around nine million (OECD-­DAC 2008: chapter 45, 1). During this time (from 2000 to 2007), the share of people living in poverty declined slightly in relative terms, from 60 per cent to 56 per cent of the population (Klingebiel 2008: 1). Nevertheless, economic growth came with a rise in income inequality as measured by the Gini Index, with an increase from a high score of 0.47 in 2001 to an even higher score of 0.51 in 2006 (Marysse et al. 2007: 453). The starting point for Vision 2020 was rather bleak and achieving its targets without external aid was highly unlikely, as the Government admitted. One consequence that the Rwandan Government drew from this was that donors would have to play a part in the strategy. Thus, having the strategy did not mean less dependence on donors. Rather, it provided greater leverage over donors’ competing priorities, including aspects of good governance that donors might prefer to pursue over the technical details of economic cooperation and specific sector programmes. Proactive donor coordination: managing resourceful external actors Rwanda – while being aid dependent – is, positively speaking, a ‘donor darling’. This status was presumably partly based on donors’ attempts to ‘make good’ for their political inaction during the genocide. It also has, however, a strong motivation in the donors’ perception of strong ownership and the Rwandan Government’s development orientation, i.e. expected reputational gains to assist a positive case. The Rwandan Government has established numerous coordination forums, in which the Government discusses engagements with its development partners.9 In the context of the possible integration of China into the Rwandan aid system, it is noteworthy that the Rwandan Government does not apply the term ‘donors’ when speaking of its partners. Donors are consistently referred to as ‘development partners’. This term is supposed to place Rwanda level to its partners and highlights Rwanda’s long-­term goal to overcome aid dependency. The wording also, possibly unintentionally, potentially accommodates non-­DAC countries, who generally do not consider themselves ‘donors’. Chinese representatives were repeatedly invited to the development partner coordination rounds, while other emerging partners were not invited to these forums, due to lack of financial weight. Chinese official participation was recorded once; the representative, however, did not attend again. Whether Chinese representation should be pursued with more vigour appeared to be subject to discussion on the Rwandan side, and we shall return to this issue in due course. With regards to DAC development partners, the Rwandan Government seems to be relatively unafraid of losing their support. The Government was, indeed, taking risks to promote its own agenda. In order to spread donor funding more evenly across policy sectors, the Rwandan Government initiated a better division

88   S. Grimm of labour among donors in late 2009 (see Grimm et al. 2011). This endeavour came with the considerable risk for the Rwandan Government, namely that dissatisfied donors would leave the country altogether when told to shift activities from one area to another, which would mean closing long-­standing activities that were seen as successful endeavours by donor agencies. It was clearly politically embarrassing to be asked to leave what had been promoted as successful activities. Yet donors did not appear to ‘pack up and go’, but, rather, argued within the rationale of shifting their respective priorities. Carefully crafting the argument against donor policies,10 the Rwandan Government’s analysis highlighted that each development partner was, on average, active in six sectors (as defined by the Rwandan Government; donors might have other delineations between sectors), causing coordination challenges both for the government and the development partners. Additionally, the Rwandan paper stated that ‘key sectors like Transport and ICT [Information and Communication Technology], Manufacturing, Services and off-­farm industry [were] starved’, while others, such as health and education, were ‘over-­crowded’, creating imbalances which might impede the implementation of government planning. Against this setting, the Rwandan Government proposed a new distribution of activities of donors across sectors. This move effectively attempted to coordinate various national policies of donors. Rwanda’s Government was aware that exceptions could become necessary when donors work with funds that were earmarked by their respective governments for particular purposes or sectors. For these cases, it proactively suggested the possibility of ‘silent partnerships’. In other words, donors should coordinate amongst each other, not via the Rwandan Government. The latter expected to have only one interlocutor on the donors’ side. The understanding as to how to implement such a scheme did not seem to be the same for all donors. There were obviously different ‘degrees of silence’ or, rather, different partners to be silent towards. Silent partners were expected to ‘remain silent’ towards the Government of Rwanda, but not necessarily towards the lead donor (Interview 28 February 2010). Some resistance to leave certain sectors remained, yet it was muffled. Overall, donors seem to have been somewhat positively surprised by a government that took donor rhetoric and modelled it into its own policies. Rwandan agency: power relations and priorities According to the Rwandan poverty reduction strategy, the four sectors of education, health, agriculture and transport were defined as key sectors for Rwandan development. This prioritisation by the Government of Rwanda was also reflected in the national budget allocation of 2009/2010, with education getting the biggest share, followed by transport and communication in second and health in third place. Expenditures in the agriculture sector ranked fourth. The allocation in one sector was not equal to the disbursement of the respective line ministry, as often more than one ministry financed activities. To give an example: the allocation of the education sector is divided between the Ministry of Education

Rwanda: aid dependency and agency   89 (MINEDUC), the Ministry of Local Government (MINALOC), the Ministry of Finance and Economic Planning (MINECOFIN) and the Ministry of Public Service, Skills Development and Labour (MIFOTRA). The Rwandan exercise of agency does not escape existing power relations and related constraints. On the one hand, the aid architecture and the reporting requirements for donors set out by the Rwandan Government show its commitment to govern external aid. On the other hand, there is recognition of the importance of consultation and dialogue with donors throughout the process of setting up its development and aid policies (GoR 2006: 5). The respective Rwandan policy documents consequently reflected, to a great extent, ‘Western’ influence through intensive policy dialogue (Davis 2009: 3–4). Therefore, agency does not mean that the Rwandan Government unilaterally decrees a policy. With regard to ownership, Hayman argues for the case of Rwanda: ‘What emerges here is not country ownership nor is it government ownership; rather it is joint ownership between government and donors’ (Hayman 2009: 594). The monitoring survey on the implementation of the Paris Declaration (OECD-­DAC 2008) comes to the conclusion that Rwanda disposes a ‘strong’ ownership (with the best rating possible) and shares Hayman’s views of an ‘extensive consultative process’ led by the Government of Rwanda and involving all key shareholders (OECD-­DAC 2008: 4), thus indicating that the Rwandan Government is using its limited space to exercise agency.

China’s impact on Rwandan agency: a new, additional funding opportunity Given the diversity of Chinese cooperation instruments, as well as the considerable activities in the commercial sector, the aid dimension of Chinese cooperation with Africa cannot be determined on a general basis, but rather, it has to be assessed on a case-­by-case basis, applying the ODA criteria as much as possible. Overall, as a lump sum, Chinese aid to Rwanda since 1971 amounted to RMB1 billion (US$146 million), which is composed of a grant share of 490 Mio RMB (49 per cent), a share of zero-­interest loans of 320 Mio RMB (32 per cent) and a share of preferential loans of 210 Mio RMB (21 per cent). These figures were provided by the then-­Chinese ambassador to Rwanda; they are obviously rounded figures, as they total more than 100 per cent. As is usually the case with Chinese aid, the figures were not disaggregated to sectors at country level and were not presented on an annual basis per country. While, on the one hand, financial assistance plays an important role, concrete projects of technical and personal assistance are also key. These projects are – as a matter of policy – linked (‘tied’) to Chinese sourcing of the goods and services in question (Grimm 2011). Linked to the tied nature of development assistance, Rwandan actors identify another rationale behind the Asian donors’ engagement: ‘the Chinese want to provide concrete things on the ground whereas Europeans are mainly concerned with capacity building’ (Interview 24 February 2010). In other words, China was

90   S. Grimm regarded as being mainly interested in tangible and visible project implementation. Cooperation with these donors was arguably ‘supply-­driven, not demand-­ driven’. This is perceived to be the case for the group of Asian donors, independent of their (non)membership of the DAC (Interview 29 March 2010). The ‘Asian approach’ was also characterised by the lack of transparency of aid flows, due to the reluctance to report in a regular and complete way to the GoR, as well as a focus on the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Co-­operation (MINAFFET) as sole negotiation partner in the GoR (Interviews 24 February 2010, 29 March 2010). Moreover, based on the preference for turnkey projects, such as the donation of the Rwandan Foreign Ministry, the State House or roads, for instance, a Rwandan interviewee flagged concern about the lack of knowledge transfer: ‘the Chinese bring you a fish, but they do not teach you how to do the fishing’ (Interview 25 February 2010). The reasoning behind these statements becomes comprehensible when taking a look at the Forum for China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC). As stated above, within the scope of this forum, China makes regular pledges, in which it offers very specific and concrete measures of assistance to Africa. In 2006, for example, China pledged to ‘send 100 senior Chinese agricultural experts to Africa and set up 10 agricultural demonstration sites in Africa’ or to ‘build 10 hospitals and 30 anti-­ malaria clinics, while providing approximately $37.5 million for the purchase of anti-­malaria drugs’ (according to the FOCAC plan of action; see Grimm 2012; Davies et al. 2008). This certainly explains an impression of supply-­ drive on the Chinese side. The planning, as well as the conduct, of interactions appears to be highly centralised in Beijing, and personal interactions of Chinese officials with other development partners appear very limited, much to the expressed chagrin of numerous interviewees among Western donors in Rwanda. For the Rwandan Government, however, China provided a one-­stop shop when providing aid and investment at the same time. Chinese provinces were not separately represented in Rwanda, while the staffing of some projects was apparently attributed to certain Chinese provinces. In the case of Rwanda, the medical team in Kibungo/Ngoma was usually staffed by personnel from the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. Additionally, and more recently, some (minor) aspects of cooperation were handled by a Kigali-­based (cultural) Confucius Institute, staffed by Chongqing University. However, the interlocutors for the Rwandan Government on these projects were the Chinese Embassy and, further up the chain of command, the Central Government of China. How to ‘play’ China: mix of interests in activities China’s engagement in Rwanda was concentrated on the four major priority sectors, as defined by the Rwandan Government: agriculture, education, health and infrastructure. As previously mentioned, however, modalities matter for the exercise of agency by the African partner, and we shall thus look more closely into the various activities (for more details, see Grimm et al. 2011).

Rwanda: aid dependency and agency   91 Agriculture Agriculture is one of the key areas of Chinese activities in economic cooperation throughout Africa (Brautigam 2009). In comparison to the engagement of Western donors, China followed a rather new and innovative approach. Specifically, the idea of establishing agriculture demonstration centres featured prominently in the FOCAC commitments of 2006 and relating to the demonstration centres in Chinese provinces. Agricultural demonstration centres are also discussed in the context of Chinese engagement in agro-­business (Brautigam 2009). However, it was unclear how much the Rwandan side could shape the specific activities. According to Chinese sources, the demonstration centre in Rwanda is the only project among the FOCAC commitments that was implemented by a Chinese university (which holds the patents for the technology). The demonstration centre in Rwanda was said to be worth the equivalent of US$5.27 million (Interview 4 March 2010). The construction of the centre started in December 2009, after some Rwandan preparatory work by the local host institution, which also provided the 22 hectares of land and planned to be in charge of the trainee selection, together with the MINAGRI. During the construction phase, 100 local workers were employed per day; around 20 technicians came from China, illustrating a different ratio of local to Chinese workers than is often suggested in the literature. This may or may not have to do with Rwandan negotiation skills. As is usual Chinese policy, the centre was meant to be economically viable after an initial three years of full Chinese funding. Afterwards, the centre should be transformed into a Sino–Rwandan joint venture; the shareholder on the Chinese side was still to be negotiated. A second project in the agriculture sector – a bamboo project – was a Chinese ‘aid project’ that was fully financed by the Chinese Government, while administrated and coordinated by the Rwandan National Forestry Authority (NAFA) under the Rwandan Ministry of Forestry and Mining. Two Chinese technicians were paid by China. The China Aid Bamboo Project was agreed to run for two years, but the Rwandan Government requested for China to extend the project for another two to three years (Interview 16 March 2010). The financial viability of the project seemed to have been one major challenge and repeated demands for fresh funding potentially compromised the position of the Rwandan side. Education Chinese engagement in education was similar to activities of Western donors. Economic benefits or win-­win situations for the Chinese side could not be spotted in most activities conducted within the education sector (except for the construction of schools). China was the biggest scholarship provider in Rwanda, with 103 Rwandan students studying in China in 2010. Students interested in going abroad could apply directly to the scholarships that were advertised by the Students Financing Agency for Rwanda (SFAR) – an autonomous agency of the Rwandan Ministry of Education. A Chinese particularity was that, first, not all

92   S. Grimm scholarships were fully financed by China, so the Rwandan Government, in some cases, had to cover part of the costs. Second, the Chinese offers were made on a year-­by-year basis and underwent considerable changes. For example, in 2008, a total of 30 students were invited to China; however, in 2009, only eight could go. Other countries were said to normally keep their number of scholarships stable (Interview 30 March 2010). These difficulties indicated limited Rwandan influence over decisions in this area. Health The role of China in the health sector in comparison to other donors cannot be defined clearly, due to the lack of accessible data. The majority of Chinese engagement consisted of technical project assistance, rooted in the southern solidarity discourse of the 1970s. Cooperation between Rwanda and China in the area of health has existed since 1982, when a Chinese medical team was first stationed at Kibungo Hospital (now Ngoma District, Eastern Province). Every two years, a new team of about 12 doctors and nurses is sent to Rwanda to replace the previous team, coming from the Chinese province of Inner Mongolia. Cooperation at the time of research included: (1) short-­term training in the management of health facilities and traditional medicine for Rwandan health professionals; (2) study tours in China; and (3) scholarships for Rwandan medical postgraduates in China. Additionally, China was constructing the Masaka Hospital (100 beds) in Kicukiro/Kigali, which, according to a Rwandan government official, was supposed to be completed between the end of 2011 and the beginning of 2012 (Interview 24 March 2010). The Ministry of Health produced an (unpublished) ‘Memo on Chinese cooperation’ assessing the cooperation, thus indicating that planning on the Rwandan side attempted to include Chinese cooperation proactively. Infrastructure/transport Infrastructure returned to the upper ranks of the agenda only relatively recently, not least so with the African-­initiated New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) in 2002. Hard infrastructure had been one of the key areas of international development cooperation in the early days of development aid in the 1960s. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Western development partners shifted their attention away from the formerly popular infrastructure sector to those sectors more directly related to poverty reduction and the Millennium Development Goals, such as health and education. Transport would seem like the key sector for Chinese engagement: high visibility and project assistance leading to physically tangible results, analogous to China’s own development strategy. Infrastructure, generally, is a focal point of China’s project aid and concessional loans, namely the energy sector (40 per cent), the transport sector (20 per cent) and the telecommunication sector (12 per cent) (Hackenesch 2009: 48). The fact that the large infrastructure projects

Rwanda: aid dependency and agency   93 funded by China are usually carried out by Chinese companies serves as a further motivation for the Chinese Government to engage in such projects with development funding: [The Chinese Government] will vigorously encourage Chinese enterprises to participate in the building of infrastructure in African countries, scale up their contracts, and gradually establish multilateral and bilateral mechanisms on contractual projects. (MOFA 2006) The Rwandan Government received a US$37 million concessional loan from the Chinese Exim-­Bank in 2009, with a grace period of ten years, 30 years endurance and a 35 per cent grant element. Thirty million USD of this loan was reserved for a road rehabilitation and maintenance project covering 36 kilometres of streets in Kigali City. While, according to Rwandan ministerial staff, it was the Rwandan side who decided on the rehabilitation of roads in Kigali (Interview 16 March 2010), no other actor in the transport sector – including other development partners, as well as other contractors – seemed to have been aware of a Rwandan plan to carry out such a project prior to the Chinese Exim-­ Bank’s offer to fund this activity. Thus, this project might well be a supply-­ driven project originating from a Chinese Government suggestion, and, therefore, it raises questions regarding the driving force of the activities. Rwandan challenges with the new partner In the area of road maintenance, Chinese funding might have filled a gap that Western donors’ focus on (rural) poverty reduction left; in an alternative reading, Chinese actors might have convinced government officials of their priorities. It is difficult to look behind the scenes in government negotiations. Both sides have clear incentives, after the deal was struck, to claim that it was the initiative of the Rwandan Government: China will emphasise the partnership aspect and the demand-­driven approach in that partnership, while the Rwandan Government will want to highlight its agency. Additionally, having reached a deal with the Chinese, this can be used to show ‘traditional donors’ that their good will is not always needed and that Rwanda might have other options. The very discussion of the Chinese option thereby increased the leverage of African governments when engaging with traditional partners (Grimm et al. 2011). In any case, while China brings additional funding, it certainly does not fulfil all of the wishes of the Rwandan Government. Rwanda’s Government would like to link up to the railroad systems of its neighbours – Tanzania, Uganda and Kenya. The most prominent project of this kind is a planned railway which connects Rwanda with the Tanzanian port of Dar-­es-Salaam. Funding for this idea, however, was apparently unavailable, and China did not appear particularly eager to come to financial assistance in this area, either, as it would be an extremely costly endeavour.

94   S. Grimm Referring to a one-­stop donor like China comes with limited control over tendering processes and financial administration for Rwanda. Some assistance comes with limited control of the Rwandan Government over funding or knowledge regarding progress of the project. As Rwandan interviewees complained, the Chinese approach was also characterised by the lack of transparency of aid flows, due to the reluctance to report in a regular and complete way to the Rwandan Government (Interview 25 February 2010). This clearly negatively impacted on agency in terms of project implementation. With regards to the road maintenance project, MINECOFIN was said to have received the information only after the MINAFFET had already signed the agreement with the Exim-­ Bank, indicating open questions of coordination within the Rwandan Government. Agency, however, also requires the administration to speak with one voice, as otherwise, donors and their respective agendas will detract attention from national goals and will trigger internal administrative fighting over whose recipe for economic development should prevail; a strong national agenda needs to be in place. With regards to the engagement of, and with, China, this does not always seem to be the case. Despite the Chinese rhetoric of ‘no strings attached’, several Rwandan actors complained about the strong economic conditions attached to Chinese aid or, put differently, about the tied nature of Chinese assistance. Chinese actors were also expected to have immediate gain from China’s cooperation. This was most obvious in the infrastructure/transport sector: Chinese projects’ tenders catered specifically to Chinese companies to get engaged in Rwanda, be it building schools linked to the FOCAC commitments, road construction based on concessional loans or building a new foreign ministry. Only basic material for construction was bought in Rwanda (for example, sand). Any other construction material or machinery was said to have been imported from China (Grimm et al. 2011). Positively speaking, this provided for inner-­Chinese competition. Yet non-­ Chinese were excluded from Chinese project implementation (including Rwandans, if there had been any competent companies for large-­scale developments). Thereby, the potential broader benefit of providing business opportunities for Rwandan enterprises, even in logistically manageable areas of construction, was limited, indicating a lack of purposeful influence on an external partner’s agenda.

Conclusion China appears to have been used by Rwandan leadership, both as a source of additional funding for national plans and as additional leverage over DAC donors. The ‘China card’ is thus regarded as an additional option in driving one’s agenda and could be regarded as a supportive factor for Rwandan agency. Rwanda appears to exercise strong agency over its traditional donors. Yet the levels of specific and detailed influence over Chinese engagement were more difficult to determine, and it was not always clear that Rwanda was the driver of the agenda. Agency seemed to have been at its weakest when it came to implementation, but there were also some question marks over who had initiated

Rwanda: aid dependency and agency   95 specific projects. Some findings clearly suggest an uneven attempt to the application of agency. In the health sector, for instance, China was not included in the sector coordination of development partners and, apparently, few, if any, attempts were made to change this. Even though China was included in the Rwandan Government’s list of major development partners for the health sector, Beijing had not been asked to join that group. The unequal treatment of development partners – despite a strong drive for agency and high rhetoric of ownership – could prove more of a challenge than appears at first glance. Uneven exercise of agency risks undermining the strong stance towards some, as reluctant DAC donors might not see the point of adhering to their own commitments, when others get a free ride. In any case, the Rwandan side will have to adapt its rhetoric to the needs of having new actors who claim – rightly or wrongly – that south–south cooperation is of a very different nature. Not surprisingly, China obviously did not feel that the Paris Agenda, including better aid coordination and the implementation of principles such as alignment and ownership on the side of the partner country, were concepts that were applicable to its cooperation. Therefore, the supportive argument of referring to the Paris Declaration’s rhetoric might be waning, if it is not adapted to new actors. The challenge for African agency in the early twenty-­first century seems to be to keep the balance between the rhetoric of traditional donors and taking on-­ board new keywords (or ‘buzzwords’), such as ‘mutual benefit’ or ‘south–south partnership’, as well as ‘non-­interference’. Actors from various states have demonstrated their ability to use the language that their respective counterpart wants to hear and thus foster their own agenda. Rwandan policymakers have used these phrases to their benefit in the past and are likely to adapt to the new aspects. This will have to be done relatively quickly, if it is not to compromise their agency.

Notes   1 The precise added share of external assistance derived from the MINECOFIN sources referred to (57 per cent of the national budget) is slightly inconsistent with the share of revenues and non-­tax revenues found in a publication by the National Bank of Rwanda referred to above (50 per cent), which conforms more closely to the information obtained from a budget support development partner, indicating a share of external assistance of around 50 per cent (Interview 44).   2 The ratio of net ODA to gross national income (GNI) averaged 21 per cent (2006: 20.5 per cent; 2007: 21.6 per cent; 2008: 21.1 per cent). See www.oecd.org/dataoecd/63/19/1878421.gif and www.oecd.org/dataoecd/52/12/1893167.xls (accessed 4 January 2009).   3 See www.oecd.org/dataoecd/52/12/1893167.xls (accessed 4 January 2009).   4 The Rwandan data only covered 14 DAC donors, as well as the six non-­DAC donors in 2010 (see Grimm et al. 2011).   5 The New Times [Kigali], 27 January 2010.   6 Vision 2020 was written before the implementation of the Heavily Indebted and Poor Countries Debt Relief Initiative (HIPC).   7 PRSPs were developed in the late 1990s within the World Bank and were later used as prerequisites for international debt relief under the HIPC Initiative (see Christiansen and Hovland 2003).

96   S. Grimm   8 In the agriculture sector, for example, the process of designing an Annual Work Plan starts with the National Forestry Authority (NAFA) writing a first proposal, which is then discussed in the Sector Working Group (SWG). It is then revised by consultants, who can add their suggestions. Before being adopted, the result is once again discussed in the SWG. The Annual Work Plans summarise the objectives for a financial year.   9 For more information on the different coordination fora, see Grimm et al. 2011. 10 The Division of Labour Proposal picked up on already existing commitments of donors to limit their engagement to a maximum of three sectors each (see EU Code of Conduct on a Division of Labour 2007 and Accra Agenda for Action 2008) and redistributes all donors, according to the Rwandan Government’s preferences.

7 ‘Image management’ and African agency Ugandan regional diplomacy and donor relations under Museveni Jonathan Fisher African governments arguably have less autonomy over their domestic policy agendas than any other group of state actors in the international system.1 Dependence on international aid flows, in particular, has historically provided many African regimes with limited room for manoeuvre in the design and implementation of national policies, given the frequent attachment by donors of highly prescriptive economic and political conditionalities to their much-­needed aid disbursements since the 1980s. The necessity of accepting such aid ‘with strings attached’ has compelled many African governments to institute usually unwelcome, but wholesale, economic and political reform programmes, in order to secure continued international assistance. This dispensation has affected states across the continent and incorporated an increasingly diverse range of issues, from exchange rate mechanism reform to homosexual rights. In this context, therefore, it is perhaps difficult to identify where African agency or ‘African agencies’ might exist at the international level. This study will, however, demonstrate that agency can be carved out by even the most aid-­dependent African states through a strategy conceptualised as ‘image management’.2 This approach involves a regime employing a combination of skilled diplomacy, savvy media engagement and targeted policy action to persuade donors of its continued value to them, according to a variety of premises. In constructing and augmenting such international narratives, African governments are able to convince donors to hold back on imposing prescriptive conditionalities, for fear of such actions alienating an apparently useful regional ally. Consequently, these governments are permitted a freer hand over their domestic policymaking – they have, in effect, secured agency in this area. In exploring this issue, the chapter will focus particularly on the case of Uganda under the National Resistance Movement (NRM) regime of Yoweri Museveni, in power since 1986 (see Beswick 2010a, 2010b; this volume for a related discussion on the case of Rwanda). The Museveni Government, it will be argued, has used image management as a means to maintain donor support, while simultaneously avoiding international interference in its domestic political affairs. Through promoting itself as a key donor ally in regional peacekeeping and counter-­terror policy, most recently in Somalia, the regime has been able to

98   J. Fisher retain substantial donor assistance, while also institutionalising an increasingly corrupt, militarised and autocratic polity throughout Uganda. In making this argument, it will first be necessary to explore the issue of agency in a broader theoretical context – how should the term be understood and how should it be conceptualised in an African setting? Uganda’s use of image management to secure agency will then be analysed, with particular reference to its 2007 intervention in Somalia as part of an African Union (AU) peacekeeping mission. In doing so, it will be argued that the intervention has been incorporated into two longstanding images promoted by Kampala in its engagement with donors – the Museveni regime as a key ally against Islamist terrorism and as a proactive guarantor of stability and peace in Africa.

African agency and the international system: conceptual and theoretical debates Defining the meaning of agency in a study such as this is complicated by two factors. First, in some disciplines, such as philosophy, the term is applied specifically to individuals, rather than corporate entities, such as a state or government (Wight 2006: 177). Second, even within the discipline of international relations (IR), definitions of the concept are often frustratingly vague and sometimes overlap with other ideas, such as power, control and, particularly within development studies, ownership (Whitfield and Fraser 2009a: 4–5). ‘Rarely is it clear’, notes Colin Wight, ‘what agency is, what it means to exercise agency, or who and what might do so’ (2006: 178). In responding to this issue, the chapter will adopt an IR-­centric view of agency, which recognises, from a practical perspective, that states (or governments as representatives of states) are the basic unit of theoretical analysis in the discipline and are often discussed as if they were individuals, hence it is both appropriate and necessary to conceive as states or governments as being able to exercise agency. The construction of the state as agent, as Colin Wight has rightly argued, is a basic assumption of the IR discipline and one upon which, ‘to some extent, its identity might be said to depend’ (Wight 2006: 177). Adopting this form of semantic equivalence is particularly salient in the African context, since policymaking in African politics is often extremely centralised and personalised around the person of the president. Among IR scholars, there also seems to be a general consensus on the major components of agency. As Barry Buzan et al. and Christopher Hill have noted, agency, at its most basic level, entails ‘the faculty or state of acting’ and that in order to ‘act’, a state must have the ‘freedom of choice’ to do so – that is, it must be in an environment where existing international structural constraints (be they political, economic or otherwise) do not constrain its actions to the extent that it cannot act independently at all (Buzan et al. 1993: 103; Hill 2003: 26). A second element of agency, however, involves a state’s actual ‘exerting [of] power’ (Hill 2003: 26) – this is perhaps self-­evident in that, in order to show that a state has acted, one must be able to see that its actions have had an effect. To a large extent, therefore, agency and power are inseparable for many IR theorists; Wight

‘Image management’ and African agency   99 notes, for example, that within IR, agency is generally ‘theorised as the exercise [by a state] of power’ (2006: 206). This leads us to consider what ‘exercising power’ could mean, particularly in an African context, where, as noted, room for manoeuvre is especially constrained by international forces. Robert Dahl and Joseph Nye both conceptualise the exercising of power as ‘the ability to control others, to get others to do what they otherwise would not do’, largely through the use (or threat of use) of physical force (Dahl 1957: 202–203; Nye 1990: 154). For most African governments, however, exercising this kind of power, at least in their relations with donors, is not possible or necessarily desirable. In the case of Uganda, aware of donors’ propensity for making aid disbursements conditional on democratisation and other governance reforms, the semi-­authoritarian Museveni regime’s main international concern has been to ensure that its donors do not attach such political conditions to their Ugandan aid programmes. In other words, like many African governments, the Museveni regime has been more interested in getting donors not to do things that they would otherwise do, as opposed to getting them to do things they otherwise would not. Stephen Lukes suggests that power can indeed be exercised by a weaker party in this context through ‘influencing [the] very wants’ of the stronger. ‘It is the supreme exercise of power’, he contends, ‘to get another . . . to have the desires you want them to have’ (Lukes 1974: 23–37). For an African government such as Uganda’s, exercising this power could therefore involve persuading donors to prioritise security and regional cooperation goals in their overall relationships with Kampala, rather than democracy promotion with its associated conditional­ ities and threats to cut aid. In such a scenario, traditional hard resources, such as military might, economic prowess or political authority, are less valuable commodities than political nous and strategic diplomacy – attributes which many governments can possess or develop, regardless of their reliance on international support for regime maintenance purposes. A number of commentators have explored how African governments have employed such image management strategies to secure agency in their relations with donors. Jean-­Francois Bayart, for example, notes how leaders such as Zaire’s Mobutu have used the ‘discourse of democracy’ in this regard (Bayart 2000: 225–226). For the most part, however, Bayart seeks to claim agency for African governments through identifying ways in which they have subverted or manipulated particular events (wars, elections, etc.), in order to ‘trick’ donors into continuing their support (Bayart 2000: 226). While this certainly develops the idea that aid-­dependent regimes can increase their agency through managing donor perceptions of specific actions, it does not, however, explore how this can be done on a more general level. This latter point, nonetheless, is briefly picked up by Lindsay Whitfield and Alastair Fraser in their extensive investigation of African ‘ownership’ of domestic policy processes. Whitfield and Fraser point out that international support for a regime is often founded upon ‘the vagaries of diplomatic, civil society and media representations’ of the regime – as opposed to objective

100   J. Fisher ‘facts’ – and that, if savvy enough, these regimes can ‘manoeuvre themselves into the position of a major donor ally’ through attempting to influence such representations (Whitfield and Fraser 2009b: 40–41). It is not clear from their analysis, however, how past governments have done this or how it can be demonstrated by commentators. This study attempts to build on these scholarly insights by introducing and conceptualising the concept of image management as a means by which African regimes can, and have, exercised agency in the international system (Fisher 2012). Through actively attempting to influence how donors see them, African governments can, to some extent, ensure that donors view them in line with ‘positive’ narratives associated with international assistance and political support, rather than with more ‘negative’ narratives linked to democratic backsliding, high-­level corruption and human rights abuses. In so doing, they can be said to be, in Lukes’ words, ‘influencing the very wants’ of the international community and therefore ‘exercising agency’, as described by most IR commentators. Image management, therefore, is both a strategy for increasing African agency in the international and, indirectly, domestic spheres, as well as a form of agency itself in the sense of a dynamic mode of interaction with the international system.

Image management and the case of Uganda The employment of image management strategies by an African regime appears to consist of two major elements: (1) policies: the undertaking of particular policies and positions, covert or open (supporting specific donor military operations, for example), which can be presented as part of an overall narrative on the regime (see Bayart 2000: 225–226); and (2) communication: the use of a variety of media to sell such images to donors. Kenya’s Daniel arap Moi and Zaire’s Mobutu Sese Seko appear to have employed the first of these aspects relatively successfully in the 1990s: fomenting and then putting-­down ethnic conflict in certain areas, in order to convince donors of their apparent indispensability as guarantors of national stability in their respective states (Brown 2001: 727–734; McNulty 1999: 68). This allowed them to carve out considerable agency in their domestic affairs by discouraging donors from interfering in their internal politics. Both, for example, had established or formalised autocratic states with donor assistance by the mid-­1980s and both convinced donors, who had exhibited initial post-­Cold War enthusiasm for regime change in Nairobi and Kinshasa, to step back from imposing political conditionalities between 1992 and 1994. The Museveni regime, however, has gone beyond presenting itself to donors according to only one narrative on regional stability, in order to respond to a constantly changing international environment; other images promoted by Kampala since 1987 include ‘Uganda as an economic success story’, ‘Uganda as an HIV success story’ and, particularly since 9/11, ‘Uganda as an ally in the Global War on Terror (GWOT)’. The regime has also been far more adept than

‘Image management’ and African agency   101 other African governments in the second and most crucial part of image management: the use of certain strategies to portray regime actions to donors in line with narratives being promoted. Broadly speaking, these strategies can be grouped into three major categories (as explored below). The regime’s use of personalised informal diplomacy President Museveni and his major advisers have worked to ensure relationships with key donor officials are based as far as possible on informal personal ties, rather than formal diplomatic links. Through the use of humour, studied straightforward honesty and intellectual digressions in meetings with senior donor personnel, often arranged in informal surroundings such as Museveni’s western Ugandan farm, the Ugandan leader has fostered close personalised ties with a number of significant Western officials. These include, most notably, European aid ministers, such as the UK’s Lynda Chalker and Clare Short and Sweden’s Eveline Herfkens, along with US security personnel and diplomatic officers, such as Susan Rice, Rosa Whitaker and Jendayi Frazer. Kampala’s particular skill at developing such relationships of trust and personal sympathy with Western officials has been commented on by a number of former civil servants and diplomats in the UK and US foreign policy bureaucracies (Fisher 2011: 141–142). In doing so, the regime has been able to cultivate a diplomatic environment that is ideally suited to promoting particular understandings of the regime’s activities, often to the exclusion of others. The pivotal role of Museveni himself in this strategy reflects, to a considerable extent, the central place of the Ugandan leader in the country’s decision-­ making machinery, particularly in relation to security and foreign policy matters. Foreign policymaking in Uganda is highly personalised, and Museveni, who is also Commander-­in-Chief of the Ugandan People’s Defence Forces (UPDF ) and chair of the military High Command and Army Council, has been the key actor in all major policy decisions, both in the agenda-­setting and implementation stages (Mutengesa and Hendrikson 2008: 65–66). Though formal institutions, such as the Cabinet, Parliament and ministries, are often consulted in the lead-­up to major decisions – for example, in relation to Uganda’s support for the 2003 US-­led War on Iraq or in advance of its 2007 intervention in Somalia – there is little evidence that their views have any real influence on choices made by the president (Mutengesa and Hendrikson 2008: 65–66).3 Indeed, these formal institutions are frequently by-­passed by Museveni with key decisions, such as that relating to Uganda’s 1996 invasion of Congo, often made through informal consultations with family members, trusted NRM cadres and UPDF officers or via the creation of ad hoc security committees reporting directly to the president (Clark 2001a: 262–263; Thakur 2005: 127; Mutengesa and Hendrikson 2008: 67–68). Even within Museveni’s circle of confidantes – a group Thakur calls the ‘State House complex’ – it is unclear how much influence is afforded to those outside the president’s immediate family (Thakur 2005: 127). Many presidential

102   J. Fisher advisors, for example, reportedly have ‘very limited access’ to their employer and even one who has traditionally held Museveni’s ear, senior public relations advisor John Nagenda, lamented in 2011 that the president ‘did not listen to advice’ (Independent 2009; Daily Monitor 2011). This is not to say, of course, that Museveni micromanages every stage of the policy process personally. This would obviously be impossible. It is clear, however, that the Ugandan leader’s personal preferences are fully reflected in foreign policy decisions that are made and diplomatic activities that are undertaken on Uganda’s behalf. Analyses of the Ugandan Government’s actions, therefore, are, to a considerable degree, analyses of the Ugandan President’s actions, and this viewpoint will be reflected in the language used throughout this chapter. The regime’s employment of public relations or ‘lobbying firms’ in donor capitals Kampala has also retained a number of lobbying firms in Washington and London since 1989, in order to promote and manage its image in these countries on a permanent basis. Though such behaviour is commonplace among both northern and southern governments, Uganda’s employment of this practice is particularly noteworthy for the purposes of the present study. The regime, for example, has been especially discerning in its selection of representation and has often contracted private firms operated by former donor officials who have previously been personally close to Kampala (see above). These have included the [Rosa] Whitaker Group in Washington between 2003 and 2010 (which hired Jendayi Frazer in 2009) and Africa Matters Ltd in London since c.1997 – a firm founded and run by former UK Development Minister Lynda Chalker (Fisher 2011: 149–154). It has also made sure to retain firms with specific knowledge of subjects at the heart of Ugandan image management policy, such as security (such as Scribe Strategies between 2005 and 2007, see below), and to bolster its representation when necessary. Between 2003 and 2007, for example, Kampala hired at least five firms in the US and UK when Uganda’s democratic deficit received unprecedented scrutiny in the global press. Activities undertaken by these firms on the regime’s behalf have varied according to their remit (for example, whether they are media-­focused or government-­focused), but have, once again, centred particularly around forging personal links between senior Ugandan officials and donor personnel, particularly in the White House and US Congress (Fisher 2011: 149–161). The regime’s proactive engagement with Western media organisations, universities and policy institutes Finally, Kampala has also reached out to a variety of non-­governmental groups in the international media (for example, AP, CNN, Canada TV Al-­Jazeera), ­academic (for example, the University of Oxford), business and public policy

‘Image management’ and African agency   103 communities (including the Royal African Society, Royal Commonwealth Society, Woodrow Wilson Center and Council on Foreign Relations), in order to, as far as possible, influence how these groups portray the Ugandan Government. At times, this has been undertaken using lobbying firms (for example, Burston-­Marsteller in the US or Hill and Knowlton in the UK), but often it has been initiated by the State House itself as part of the international travel itinerary organised for Museveni or his relevant representative. Engagement with these varied communities has taken many forms, including speeches, roundtables, business breakfasts, interviews and debates, depending on the particular audience or media, but has invariably been aimed at influencing perceptions on Uganda and ensuring that international discourse on the Museveni Government focuses on its role in particular areas, such as the GWOT and regional peacekeeping. Significantly, the regime has not shied away from entering into dialogue with more critical groups, such as scholars, humanitarian NGOs such as Human Rights Watch and some sections of the Western media. At times, it has used encounters with such audiences as a means to advance favoured narratives on Kampala’s activities (for example, in a 2003 interview of Museveni by the Associated Press). More often, however, it has simply sought to defend itself by dispatching loyal regime representatives to personally contest criticisms levelled by these groups in a measured, respectful manner, as Uganda’s ministers for defence and foreign affairs (both close allies of the president) did at a 2005 debate on presidential term limits hosted by London’s Royal African Society. This latter strategy has been developed by the regime in recognition of the fact that not all audiences are as susceptible to image management techniques as others, but it is nevertheless important to address international critics’ concerns in a reasonable manner, given their potential influence upon the views of donor policymakers. This approach has also complemented the ‘give it to you straight’ and ‘easily confrontable’ persona maintained by Museveni himself in his frequent audiences with international officials (Fisher 2011: 163–167). The extent to which Kampala’s use of these image management techniques has secured it greater agency in its domestic activities and relations with donors, as conceptualised above, is clear. Uganda has received generous amounts of international assistance, increasingly in the form of budgetary support – a modality which directly finances regime spending – since 1987. Concurrently, donors have been far more lenient in their responses to the regime’s domestic transgressions (democratic backsliding, state-­sanctioned corruption and human rights abuses in the north of the country) than they have with many other African governments – notably Kenya – who have been less capable of managing donor perceptions. Most commentators suggest that this greater donor tolerance can be explained by Kampala’s ‘usefulness’ for donors as an economic success story, regional guarantor of stability and ally in the GWOT (Hauser 1999; Haynes 2001; Pinkney 2005: 126), and this is also borne out in the comments of Western officials themselves (Fisher 2011, 2012). The remainder of this chapter will nonetheless demonstrate how the Museveni regime has skilfully and consistently

104   J. Fisher employed image management strategies in a successful effort to bring about this dispensation and therefore to carve out greater space for itself, both domestically and internationally. In making this argument, the study will focus particularly on Kampala’s 2007 decision to intervene in Somalia as part of the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). While undoubtedly also motivated by domestic and regional concerns (see Fisher 2012: 418), the regime’s primary reason for involving itself in the operation was related to image management. The Museveni Government, as will be outlined below, saw AMISOM as a means to bolster and develop two major narratives it had promoted among donors since the 1990s: Uganda as a regional guarantor of peace and stability, and Uganda as a reliable partner in the GWOT. The decision will therefore be explored in the context of Kampala’s previous image management activities in both areas, organised according to the two steps in the image management process delineated above, and the chapter will conclude by demonstrating how it has secured the Museveni regime further domestic and international agency since 2007. However, it will be necessary to briefly set out the background to the intervention.

The 2007 Somali intervention and Ugandan relations with donors Though generally interested in contributing to a peacekeeping mission in war-­ torn Somalia since late 2004/early 2005, the Ugandan Government did not become militarily involved in the country until February 2007, shortly after AMISOM was endorsed by the UN on 20 January (Williams 2009a: 515–517; Fisher 2012: 417). Kampala had been involved, together with Ethiopia, Kenya and others, with varying degrees of enthusiasm, in planning AMISOM’s failed predecessors under the auspices of the Intergovernmental Authority of Development (IGAD) and the AU between 2004 and 2006, but had been unable to move these initiatives from the conference room to the military theatre owing to a lack of donor interest, regional dynamics and the rapidly changing situation on the ground. However, following Ethiopia’s 2006 intervention and the donor community’s renewed interest in the Somali issue, Uganda quickly advanced itself as the key regional player behind what became AMISOM in the latter part of the year. Following the mission’s January 2007 approval by the UN Security Council, Uganda assumed overall command of the operation and dispatched the first contingent of troops to Mogadishu, later to be joined by Burundi (Williams 2009a: 515–516). AMISOM’s mandate was stated as being: ‘to conduct peace support operations in Somalia, to stabilise the situation in the country in order to create conditions for the conduct of humanitarian activities and an immediate takeover by the UN’ (AMISOM 2007). Though the donor community, particularly the US, UK, EU and France, have been heavily involved in initiating and facilitating AMISOM and in training, equipping, financing and supporting Ugandan troops in Mogadishu, the Ugandan Government has publicly maintained that its involvement in the mission has had

‘Image management’ and African agency   105 little to do with its international relations beyond the continent. Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa argued in August 2009, for example, that: ‘[Uganda’s involvement] has nothing to do with our long-­standing relationship with the United States against terrorism’ (Kutesa 2009). As argued elsewhere, however, this is not convincing and is not consistent with the regime’s presentation of the issue to its international partners since 2006 (Fisher 2012: 418). It is clear, for example, that Uganda’s participation in AMISOM has, in part, been a continuation of an image management strategy undertaken throughout the 1990s and 2000s, which is aimed at convincing donors of its reliability as a regional peacekeeper and ally against terrorism. The intervention’s place in this tradition will now be elucidated according to the two elements of image management outlined above: policies and communication. Kampala’s image management strategy has been built upon concrete domestic and regional actions. In promoting itself as a vital guarantor of regional stability, for example, the regime has contributed to peacekeeping missions on the continent and proactively sought a leadership role in donor-­sponsored mediation processes. Long before sending its troops into Somalia, for example, the Ugandan Government had already sent nearly 800 troops to join the Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) peacekeeping force in Liberia as far back as 1994 and remained militarily committed long after many other African forces had abandoned the mission (United Nations 1995: 18; Adibe 1997: 478). During this deployment, the Ugandan Army was praised by many commentators for its ‘exemplary behaviour and discipline’ and for being one of only two states outside of Liberia’s immediate neighbourhood willing to support the mission with troops (de Torrente 2001: 116).4 For a country such as Uganda, which, in 1994, was still recovering from decades of war and civil strife, to involve itself in an exercise of such logistical complexity and strategic insignificance (from a Ugandan perspective) would no doubt have sent a strong message to regional and international actors regarding Kampala’s perception of its regional obligations. This is particularly because Museveni himself had pushed hard at the then-­Organisation for African Unity (OAU) for the sending of a military force to help resolve the conflict (Adibe 1997: 473). Moreover, Uganda has consistently attempted to play a leading role in regional peace negotiations and initiatives, even when the instability such initi­ atives have been designed to address has been caused, to a considerable degree, by Kampala’s own belligerent foreign policy in Congo and Sudan. In the mid-­ 2000s, for example, Uganda was a major player in the discussions leading to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement, which ended the 20-year Sudanese civil war. Similarly, in the later 2000s, it was heavily involved in the Tripartite Plus Joint Commission – an inter-­governmental panel comprising of delegations from Congo, Rwanda and Uganda. Its main purpose was to ‘achieve lasting peace and security in the Great Lakes region’ through restoring diplomatic relations between Kinshasa, Kigali and Kampala, strengthening regional security mechan­ isms and eliminating ‘negative forces’ – rebel groups – who posed a threat to ‘regional peace’ (US Department of State 2007).

106   J. Fisher Uganda has also attempted to project itself as one of the foremost authorities on resolving political crises in the African continent. During the 2000s, for example, Museveni chaired the regional initiative on resolving Burundi’s civil war and, though both South Africa and Tanzania have more often been cited by commentators as responsible for the success of this process, the Burundian leader has also expressed thanks to Uganda for the role it has played (Mukasa 2009a). Less edifying was the failed attempt by Kampala to provide ‘Ugandan solutions to African problems’ in response to the 2008 electoral violence in Kenya. In this instance, Museveni’s efforts to find ‘an amicable and immediate solution’ to the Kenyan political crisis were thwarted by mistrust engendered between himself and presidential candidate Raila Odinga, as well as the corresponding success of a rival African mediation process set up by Kofi Annan (Khadiagala 2009: 437–438). After being criticised for continuing with an ‘inefficient’ parallel process which was clearly not succeeding, Uganda withdrew, nevertheless emphasising the ‘major breakthrough’ that its contribution had achieved in the talks (BBC News 2008). Uganda’s participation in AMISOM, therefore, needs to be seen as a further policy action aimed at shoring-­up its reputation as a guarantor of regional stability and peace. This policy has become one of the characteristic features of the country’s engagement with the rest of Africa and is a consequence of several domestic and regional factors (see Fisher 2012: 418). It is important to note here, however, how often the regime’s actions in this regard have been strongly aligned with Western preferences for maintaining stability in Africa. Often, in fact, Ugandan activities to this end have been made possible only with the direct assistance of officials in donor capitals. The Tripartite Plus Joint Commission, for example, was set up, funded and facilitated by Washington, as a means to promote stability in one of the more unstable regions of central Africa (Mukiibi 2007b). Similarly, though organised through IGAD, the negotiations which lead to the signing of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in 2005 were sponsored by the US, UK, Norway, Italy and other donor governments whose representatives invested heavily in the dialogue and remained solidly engaged for its entire duration. A former Ugandan minister has even suggested that the US became ‘heavily reliant’ on Kampala during the talks, both to secure the outcome it favoured and ‘to prevent the Russian and Chinese governments from playing a larger role’ in the process.5 The regime has also taken a number of practical domestic, regional and international actions, in order to lay the groundwork for its additional image as a ‘donor ally in the GWOT’. Interestingly, however, this approach appears to have pre-­dated the formal declaration of this conflict by Washington in 2001. During the 1990s, for example, Uganda’s attitude to Sudan became steadily more hostile as Washington’s own relationship with Khartoum degenerated over claims that the Bashir regime had been complicit in a number of terrorist attacks against US citizens. Between 1989 and 1995, Ugandan–Sudanese relations were tense, but never openly aggressive, even though each suspected the other of funding

‘Image management’ and African agency   107 domestic rebel groups across their borders. Thus, when asked in the early 1990s about Sudanese support for the Lord’s Resistance Army (LRA) – a Ugandan rebel group – Museveni said diplomatically: ‘the problem on our northern border is sometimes presented as one between Uganda and Sudan. Our view is that this is primarily a Sudanese problem that started before independence’ (Wafula Bichachi 2004: 79–80). By 1996, however, when the US designated Sudan a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ and suspended its embassy operations in Khartoum, Uganda had already expelled all Sudanese officials from Kampala, raided their embassy, closed numerous Ugandan Islamic NGOs with connections to Sudan, severed relations with Khartoum, claiming it ‘supported terrorists’ in Uganda, and had begun to refer to the Bashir regime as Uganda’s ‘only enemy on the continent’ (Crusader 1996). Furthermore, between 1995 and 1998, Uganda enthusiastically took part in a number of US-­funded summits and military initiatives aimed at putting pressure on Sudan and are even alleged to have served as a conduit for the supply of US arms and ammunition to the Sudanese rebel group – the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) (Times 1999; Boston Globe 1999). Interestingly, when the US and other donors took a less confrontational approach to Khartoum in the early 2000s, hoping to encourage the Bashir Government to work with them to restore peace to the country, Kampala, too, adopted a more conciliatory tone, restoring relations with Sudan in 2002. Since 9/11, Uganda has continued to align its own foreign policy with the anti-­terror priorities of its Western donors. Thus, in 2003, it became one of only five African states to give its full support to the US-­led war on Iraq, with Ugandan Foreign Minister James Waphakabulo asserting that ‘the potential link between terrorism and weapons of mass destruction poses a very serious threat to international peace and security’, and Uganda would be ‘ready to assist in any way possible’ during the operation (IOL News 2003). Similarly, since 2006, Kampala has worked closely alongside the US and other donors in putting pressure on Eritrea over its alleged support for Islamic terrorism. In 2007, for example, when the Bush administration considered designating Asmara a ‘state sponsor of terrorism’ (Associated Press 2007), Museveni reportedly visited Isaias Afwerki – the Eritrean leader – in Massawa and delivered a ‘tough message’ from Washington regarding his behaviour, following which he gave a full briefing to the State Department and White House.6 Likewise, in 2009, the US and Ugandan delegations to the UN worked together closely on passing Resolution 1907, which sought to impose economic sanctions on Eritrea for assisting Somali terrorist groups. According to a junior Ugandan Foreign Minister, Kampala had also convinced its IGAD allies of the importance of this move earlier in the year (Mukasa 2009b). In the case of Somalia, Uganda’s involvement in AMISOM appears to have been valued by donors as part of both of these agendas: securing regional stability and tackling terrorist threats. Though the chaos in Somalia and the likelihood that a sustained lack of government in the country could provide a safe haven for terrorists was of concern to donors throughout the 2000s, it is clear

108   J. Fisher that it was not until 2006 and the rise of the Islamic Courts that it became a significant worry for most. The Islamic Courts were seen by some donors, particularly the US, as ‘jihadists’ and, following their routing by the Ethiopian Army in December, Washington’s worst fears were realised when various extremist offshoots of the Courts, notably al-­Shabaab, emerged in opposition to both the Ethiopian occupiers and the transitional federal government (TFG). According to a former White House official, memos on Somalia began to appear on President Bush’s desk ‘on a daily basis’ from the latter part of 2006, and this reveals the extent to which the subject had become a major issue for Western donors; outside of crises, the US President simply does not spend his time dealing with African issues (Schraeder 1991: 385; Schraeder 2001: 389–391).7 Indeed, this concern appears to have resulted in donors reaching out to Uganda and asking the Museveni regime to intervene as part of an international peacekeeping mission. In December 2006, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice lobbied Ugandan Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa to make him aware of the apparent links between the Courts and al-­Qaeda, while George W. Bush himself telephoned Museveni, urging him to play a central role in a peacekeeping intervention aimed at shoring-­up the TFG (Daily Monitor 2006). While this version of events has been dismissed by senior US and Ugandan officials, mid-­level US and UK personnel have acknowledged that Uganda was actively ‘targeted’ and ‘leaned on’ by Washington and London and ‘encouraged’ to supply troops for this mission. Indeed, an official at the Ugandan Defence Ministry has even admitted that his government’s line, namely that involvement in AMISOM ‘has nothing to do with our relationship with the United States’, is ‘not very convin­ cing’.8 Certainly, the fact that donors have played such a significant role in facilitating and financing Uganda’s role in AMISOM demonstrates that they have been strongly supportive of Ugandan involvement. Though US officials have denied the idea of a quid pro quo, it is interesting to also note that Kampala received a substantial ‘funding package’ from Washington after joining the operation.9 It is vital to note, however, that the Museveni regime has devoted considerable energy to the second aspect of image management, both before and since the Somali intervention: communicating its image to donors as a guarantor of regional stability and ally against terrorism, both directly and indirectly. During annual visits to Washington and London, Museveni and his key advisers have been extremely savvy in soliciting interviews with major Western media organisations and speaking engagements at respected universities, such as Oxford, and think tanks, including the Woodrow Wilson Center, Royal African Society and Council on Foreign Relations. The regime has also retained a number of well-­ connected and very active lobbying firms in both capitals to represent its interests (see above). The purpose of these activities appears to have been, to a large extent, to promote these two narratives on Uganda as a means to influence donors (guarantor of stability and ally against terrorism) and downplay or neutralise other narratives that might undermine them. Thus, Museveni himself used speeches at the Woodrow Wilson Center and Council on Foreign Relations in 2002 and 2005 respectively, in order to

‘Image management’ and African agency   109 emphasise his government’s leadership in regional peacekeeping, particularly in Burundi, noting that Kampala’s assistance had ‘led to successful transition [in Bujumbura] and deployment of the first AU peacekeeping mission’ to the nation (Woodrow Wilson Center 2002; Council on Foreign Relations 2005). Similarly, in 2009, Ugandan Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa told Foreign Policy that Uganda’s leadership in regional conflict resolution had ‘without a doubt’ enabled Kampala to create a leading ‘model’ for resolving regional disagreements peacefully (Kutesa 2009). Likewise, in a 2003 Council on Foreign Relations speech, advertised as Freedom from Fear: Forging US–Africa Partnerships against Terror, Museveni assured his audience, which included a number of policymakers and diplomats, that ‘Uganda is also a member of the “Coalition of the Willing” ’ and outlined how Kampala’s domestic and regional policies in Sudan, Rwanda, Burundi and Congo had led to the establishment of ‘peace and security’ and the ‘pre-­emption’ of al-­ Qaeda attacks on donor personnel (Council on Foreign Relations 2003). Furthermore, in a 2008 speech to US Army and Pentagon officials in Kansas, he reiterated Uganda’s ‘support for the War’ and announced his enthusiasm for organising an US–AU Summit on counter-­terrorism (Museveni 2008). The regime has also made frequent use of references to its own domestic ‘terrorists’ (principally the LRA), and past instability caused by the dictatorships of Milton Obote and Idi Amin, in order to emphasise to Western officials that Uganda is genuinely in the ‘frontline of the War on Terror’ and has, under the NRM, enjoyed comparatively better domestic stability than under previous governments (Fisher 2011: 238–342). The regime has also used Western lobbyists to promote these narratives in dialogue with donor officials and legislators. Thus, in an April 2003 letter to Walter Kansteiner, US Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, Rosa Whitaker, CEO of the Whitaker Group – a US lobbyist retained by Uganda between 2003 and 2009 – stressed that: Uganda is co-­operating with US intelligence officials in the Horn of Africa, and . . . is providing strong support to the United States in regional and international fora in the war against terrorism . . . [including] . . . supporting President Bush’s Operation Iraqi Freedom. (Whitaker Group 2003: 17) Similarly, in an April 2004 letter from Whitaker to Andrew Natsios, administrator of USAID, Uganda was described as ‘one of America’s most reliable and steadfast partners in Africa’ and was introduced as a country well-­known for ‘strongly supporting the US in the global war against terrorism’ (Whitaker Group 2004). Indeed, between 2005 and 2007, Kampala retained another lobbying firm, Scribe Strategies, specifically to ensure ‘Uganda’s interest under the East Africa counter-­terrorism initiative and Uganda’s role in the war on terrorism’ (Scribe Strategies 2005). In the months leading up to Uganda’s intervention in Somalia, the Museveni regime appears to have promoted its potential involvement there to donors very

110   J. Fisher much in line with these earlier narratives. In an August 2006 letter sent by the Whitaker Group to President Bush’s National Security Advisor and his Senior Director for African Affairs on Museveni’s behalf, the Ugandan Government purportedly requested an urgent meeting with the US President at the upcoming UN General Assembly, in order to discuss Somalia. The letter noted that: ‘President Museveni shares President Bush’s particular concern about Somalia and its potential as a writhing hotbed of terrorism given that country’s lack of governance and its strategic location’. It goes on to say that: President Museveni was . . . among the first African Heads of State to support President Bush in the war on terrorism . . . [and] . . . would like to talk to [him] about building regional consensus around a policy aimed at keeping Somalia out of terrorist hands. (Whitaker Group 2006) Though a military intervention is not overtly suggested (the letter being sent only a few months after the Islamic Courts’ takeover of Mogadishu), it is telling that the note once again depicts Uganda and Museveni as key donor allies in the War on Terror. In this case, however, it actively positions Kampala as a regime equally concerned by the Somali threat as the US. Furthermore, after reminding the White House Security Chief of Uganda’s lengthy history as a reliable ally in this regard, it makes clear that Museveni is willing, indeed eager, to work with Washington to deal with the problem. It is perhaps not surprising, therefore, that later in the year, when donors began to cast around for African states to contribute to AMISOM, they turned to Uganda. It is also noteworthy that, since the intervention, Ugandan involvement in Somalia has been gradually incorporated into regime narratives aimed at Western audiences. This has been carried out in a cautious fashion to prevent domestic or regional opponents claiming that Uganda has become a Western proxy, but has nevertheless occurred. Thus, in a 2009 interview, the Ugandan Foreign Minister denied a link between donors and Uganda’s role in AMISOM, but nevertheless made sure to refer to his country’s ‘long-­standing relationship with the United States against terrorism’ alongside a warning on the danger that al-­Shabaab posed to other states in the region (Kutesa 2009). It is apparent, therefore, that the Museveni regime has used its involvement in Somalia to bolster and augment its existing reputation among donors as a regional guarantor of stability and ally in the GWOT. It is crucial, however, to determine the extent to which this image management policy allowed Kampala to maintain or increase its room for agency with donors following 2006 and 2007, by examining its relations with this community before and after the intervention. Uganda’s international image was significantly damaged between 2005 and 2006 after Museveni changed his country’s constitution, in order to run for a third term in the face of substantial international opposition. The regime’s autocratic reputation was further compounded when Museveni’s main opponent,

‘Image management’ and African agency   111 Kizza Besigye, was arrested in the lead-­up to presidential elections, with government security forces later using extra-­legal force to ensure that Besigye, even after being granted bail, could not walk free (Gloppen et al. 2008: 68–77). Though donors largely expressed their dissatisfaction with these developments through private and public criticisms, several suspended or redirected part of their aid package to Uganda in 2006 and 2007 by way of protest (Makara et al. 2008: 268–271). The crisis in Somalia, therefore, provided Kampala with an opportunity to recapture the international room for manoeuvre that it had, to some degree, lost during this period, by refocusing donor minds and returning them to their earlier, more tolerant dispositions (Fisher 2012: 421–422). By once again involving itself in a regional peacekeeping exercise, particularly one which also entailed fighting an alleged al-­Qaeda affiliate, the Museveni regime in Uganda was able to recast itself according to those positive narratives previously promoted so successfully to donors, to move away from those more negative governance-­related associations which had become attached to it and to re-­open international space for Ugandan agency. Certainly, this succeeded in practical terms; in 2006, donors disbursed US$1,554 million to the country, but by 2008, a year after AMISOM’s mission begun, this had risen by over 20 per cent to US$1,891 million (OECD 2009). Washington’s 2008 contribution was particularly generous in comparison to that provided in 2006 (OECD 2009). Kampala’s success in so quickly reorienting donor perceptions around the Somalia issue can be explained not only by its savvy actions between 2006 and 2007, but also by the fact that it did not need to reinvent its international image, but rather return it to one that had been systematically and skilfully developed and maintained for over a decade. Image management as a means to secure agency has clearly been an iterative process for the Ugandan Government.

Conclusion This chapter has argued that the agency available to African states within the international system is not necessarily predetermined and tied solely to issues such as aid dependency, economic prowess and military might. Uganda’s Museveni Government, in spite of its dependence on Western donor aid, has secured considerable agency in its relations with development partners through skilfully promoting itself internationally as a valuable donor ally across a variety of areas, including in the GWOT. The success of this proactive image management strategy, which has most recently seen Kampala’s involvement in AMISOM incorporated into this narrative, has led donors to rein in governance-­ related conditionalities in their engagement with Uganda, but nonetheless continue to finance its semi-­authoritarian government in recognition of its continued perceived usefulness. The Museveni regime has therefore been able to carve out substantially more agency than many other African states – whose international support is generally premised on robust political and economic conditionalities – by altering the external conditions of possibility existing in its relations with donors.

112   J. Fisher The role of Western donor support in assuring Museveni’s continued mainten­ ance of power, however, has become increasingly unclear since 2007. The discovery of substantial oil reserves in western Uganda in 2006, for example, together with China’s emergence as a formidable ‘no-­strings attached’ aid donor in Kampala, potentially offer less complicated sources of support for the regime in the future. Conversely, Museveni’s domestic position is far less solid in 2012 than it has been throughout the 1990s and 2000s. The election of a new generation of young and ambitious NRM MPs in 2011, for example, has led to growing insubordination in the ruling party’s usually submissive parliamentary caucus as legislators have targeted, with NRM-­appointed speaker Rebecca Kadaga’s support, key Museveni loyalists in high profile corruption inquiries (Barkan 2011: 15–16). Indeed, two ministers who have been particularly hounded by parliamentarians – Prime Minister Amama Mbabazi and Foreign Minister Sam Kutesa – are also widely seen by commentators as among the Ugandan President’s favoured successors (Barkan 2011: 15–16), again revealing the level of dissent within Museveni’s own movement (Mubiru and Ssekanjako 2011). Image management is therefore likely to be far less relevant for Museveni’s retention of power in the next decade than it has been in the previous three. This highlights a final important element of conceptualising the nature of agency for weak states: context. It is clear that the international structures that provide and restrict available space for agency are not static, but ever-­changing. Consequently, while international and domestic circumstances may, at one time, provide space for securing agency for a regime such as Uganda’s, they may also – at a later date – fluctuate, leading to this space becoming more restricted. This is not to say, however, that space for agency cannot again be carved out within this new dispensation – Kampala has, as noted, adapted its image management strategies to several changes in the international environment – but rather that questions of agency are most usefully discussed with reference to historical context and specific circumstances.

Notes 1 Aspects of this chapter, particularly the analysis related to Uganda’s 2007 intervention in Somalia, are explored in more detail in Fisher, Jonathan (2012) ‘Managing donor perceptions: contextualising Uganda’s 2007 Intervention in Somalia’, African Affairs, 111, 444: 404–423. I am grateful to the editors of African Affairs for allowing me to reproduce some of this material in this chapter. The research for the chapter was funded primarily by the Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC; award numbers PTA-­ 031–2007-ES/F024509/1 and PTA-­026–27–2861), and I am also grateful to St Antony’s College and the Department of Politics and International Relations, both University of Oxford, for providing additional funds to cover the cost of fieldwork. Some of the evidence put forward in this paper comes from interviews undertaken with current and former US, UK, Uganda and EU policymakers, diplomats, legislators, donor officials, academics, journalists and NGO personnel in Uganda, the US and the UK between October 2008 and November 2010. Many interviewees were happy to have their comments attributed in the doctoral work, which this paper is taken from, but did not necessarily agree to have them publicised in any other context. Attributions

‘Image management’ and African agency   113 from these interviews, with one exception, have therefore been left anonymous in this paper. 2 The concept of ‘image management’ has previously been introduced by the author in an article published in African Affairs (see Fisher 2012). 3 Interview with Tom Butime, Ugandan Acting Foreign Minister (2004–2005); State Minister for Regional Cooperation (2001–2005), 12 February 2010 (Kampala, Uganda). 4 The other being Tanzania. 5 Interview with Tom Butime, Ugandan Acting Foreign Minister (2004–2005); State Minister for International Cooperation (2001–2005), 12 February 2010 (Kampala, Uganda). 6 Interview with US official, November 2009 (Washington DC, US). 7 Interview with US official, November 2009 (Washington DC, US). 8 Interview with UK official, October 2009 (London, UK); Interview with US official, November 2009 (Washington DC, US); Interview with donor official, February 2010 (Kampala, Uganda). 9 Interview with UK official, October 2009 (London, UK); Interview with US official, November 2009 (Washington DC, US); Interview with donor official, February 2010 (Kampala, Uganda).

8 Corporate social responsibility as a social development paradigm in Africa’s political economy Its emergence and implications for African agency Scarlett Cornelissen

Introduction It is striking that within the study of Africa’s international relations, the issue of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and the bigger question of the emergent role of businesses in social development on the continent (or, at least, the debate about it) are hardly touched on. This seems at odds with reality, where ideas about, demands for and practices of CSR have begun to infuse various layers of economic and political life. These include manifold fair trade initiatives targeting Africa’s agricultural commodity sector, national legislation that seeks to regulate particularly foreign corporate activity and larger-­scale guidelines for corporate behaviour. As regards the latter, numerous international agreements or campaigns of the past years can be cited, which all point to an emerging global regime of CSR. The United Nations Global Compact – agreed to in 2000 as a framework of good governance, to which corporations voluntarily assent to – is perhaps the most prominent and comprehensive (Blowfield and Frynas 2005), but others, such as the Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative, focusing particularly on mining, and the Global Reporting Initiative, which promotes standards of environmental and other sustainability, are also important. In an interesting slant on the emergent international discourse on responsibility and sustainability, a few celebrity-­ led campaigns have centred on the role of consumers. The Bono-­associated Product RED Initiative is one such programme. Launched by the singer at a World Economic Forum meeting in 2006, it sets out a framework by which participating corporations, all of them well-­established global brands, give a percentage of their profits on Product RED goods to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria in sub-­Saharan Africa. Product RED simultaneously targets (Western) consumers and corporations to contribute to a humanitarian cause (Ponte et al. 2010). Clearly, then, notions and practices of corporate social responsibility are becoming more important as a benchmark and set of expectations about what the corporate sector is meant to be doing or not be doing. Within the corporate world

Corporate social responsibility and agency   115 itself, CSR has become a standard structuring component of business activities: CSR is something which all major and smaller corporations ‘have to do’, particularly in the age of neoliberalism (as shifts in consumer tastes and values translate into shareholder demands and pressures, which is what Product RED is all about). Most significantly, these ideas are not only of importance for Western corporations: like their Western counterparts, transnational corporations from the developing world increasingly have to rationalise investment activities through social development mechanisms, and they are required to demonstrate positive local impacts on host communities. Various expectations and guidelines about appropriate non-­Western corporate behaviour are starting to be articulated in a number of multilateral forums. A 2012 report by the World Economic Forum, for instance, detailed existing awareness about CSR practices by Chinese corporations, with some attention paid in that report to the Chinese corporate sector’s possible role in development in lower income countries (see WEF 2012). Also, on the fringes of the fifth Forum on China– Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) meeting in July 2012, Chinese businesses active in Africa agreed to a Declaration of Social Responsibility aimed at things such as local product and industry improvement, the transfer of technology and the provision of social services (Fabricius 2012). Increasingly, Brazilian and Indian corporations are also required to align their investment activities in developing countries with nationally or externally defined ethical standards (Ford 2010; Zadek 2010). More generally, the growing importance of CSR reflects some important changes in the global political economy. CSR lies at the intersection of global finance flows, foreign investments and international discussions about ethics, equity and sustainability. It is closely aligned with the attempts over the past years by state, but also particularly non-­state actors, such as international non-­ governmental organisations (INGOs), to institutionalise a human rights agenda in neoliberal globalisation, effectively targeting the activities of transnational corporations (Segerlund 2005). This is associated with an emergent regulatory regime that has come to influence transnational investor–recipient relationships, particularly in the African setting. For various reasons, the diffusion of CSR ideas and practices is of significance for Africa. First, the continent is much affected by the momentum and popularity that CSR is enjoying. A notable number of international, regional and national CSR programmes have been implemented on the continent in the recent past. Although they have in common broad objectives towards social development, they are varied in extent, content and nature and are driven by different groupings of actors. Second, CSR creates a new arena of political–economic interaction built on emerging norms, regulatory structures and practices. As discussed in greater detail below, African states are active participants and shapers of some of these new dynamics, but they are also only bystanders in a range of others. Thus far, there have been fewer possibilities for African states to help determine the tenor of CSR rules and regulations at the international level.

116   S. Cornelissen Third, CSR has expanded the development terrain by allowing for the inclusion of many actors in the development process and, relatedly, by reframing conventional structures of aid-­giving. Major inter-­governmental initiatives, such as the UN’s Global Compact, have given greater legitimacy to the notion that the business sector has a role to play in development. CSR has thus encouraged the recasting of donor–recipient relationships and of the broader development paradigm (Cheru 2012). Of course, on the tacit assumption that African governments have failed to develop their societies and have failed to have the requisite capacities to engender broad-­based and equitable development, Africa has long been a context where the idea of private development actors or the role of the ‘fourth estate’ (INGOs, local NGOs, community-­based organisations) in development has been sanctioned. The result has been a complex configuration of development actors comprising states, civil society and international organisations with, in the main, not particularly concrete outcomes. The emergence of CSR paradigms, however, presents an additional layer of complexity, not only because it introduces a new development actor, but because at the level of implementation, CSR involves sets of contractual relations between business and society that often bypasses the state. Social investment programmes by corporations in the communities where they are active (in the form of, say, health or educational facilities) give a particular role to those corporations and help create new local economies of development (also see Blowfield 2005a). States may seek to regulate these relationships, but their abilities to do so might be constrained. In all, CSR’s rise reflects the altered nature and geography of international capital and resultant changing balances between public and private authority in the deployment and regulation of that capital. It is also significant because its spread has engendered new norms about how public jurisdiction over private capital should be (re-)asserted or negotiated, in order to satisfy social demands around socio-­economic, environmental and political justice. As such, CSR makes prominent the changing position of the state, relative to the private sector and to societies. Its rise encourages different considerations around questions of agency in the international system: which actors, state or corporate, are most able to harness CSR’s growing momentum and popularity? Who are the main protagonists in the establishment of a regulatory regime for CSR? And whose interests are most evident in those processes? What impacts does CSR have on societies? And does it, for instance, provide a wider range of opportunities for them? This chapter reflects on the emergent role of CSR in Africa, with the aim of outlining CSR’s implications for economic and political processes on the continent, as well as for matters around African agency. It considers how CSR’s diffusion on the continent affects, and is affected by, African role players (states, firms, local communities and NGOs) and what the outcomes are of their interactions with other states and private actors in the international arena. In this discussion, agency is conceptualised as actor capacities to engage in volitional and specific ways with others, with the purpose of achieving their own goals. Such

Corporate social responsibility and agency   117 actor capacities are shaped by a wider institutional environment (the global political economy, as well as CSR’s emergent regulatory frame) that both constrains and enables actors. The chapter begins with a conceptual overview of the varied notions of CSR and a discussion of the impetuses in the global political economy that have underpinned CSR’s contemporary prominence. This is followed by a discussion of emergent CSR dynamics on the continent, which consists of a description of the main trends, as far as CSR’s establishment is concerned, and an outline of the political and other issues that CSR resultantly foregrounds. A concluding section reflects on questions regarding African agency that are created by CSR’s rise. It is argued that CSR’s nascent presence on the African continent is helping to shift relationships between African states, businesses and civil societies, as well as, more tacitly, the agencies of each of these groups by influencing actor capacities. The tendency thus far has been for businesses to have a stronger position in determining CSR agendas on the continent. African states have sought to more proactively participate in international regime expansion processes with varied results, and they have also not been highly successful in developing cohes­ive regulatory architectures at the continental level. For societies in Africa, CSR promises much in the line of alternative development opportunities, but there has tended to be disjuncture between CSR’s stated developmental intents and actual achievements.

The rise and expansion of CSR in the contemporary era Broadly defined, CSR can refer to the wide span of outreach activities that firms may engage in that, on the surface, go beyond their usual profit remit. In such a definition, CSR can include compensatory mechanisms or rewards provided internally to workers beyond the standard employer–wage relationship (such as the provision by firms of leisure facilities or scholarships to workers) or as a set of external relations with non-­employees or host communities, either as donations or as offsets for damage caused by firms’ activities. Both internal and external CSR have long histories, with both associated with industrial expansion and the development of corporate philanthropy in North American and west European contexts in the nineteenth century (Blowfield and Frynas 2005). The philanthropic roots of CSR underlie much contemporary social engagement activities by many large and small firms, with CSR often still seen as mere donation by them. Over the past 30 years, however, dynamics within the larger international environment, the rise of neoliberal globalisation and the deepened institutionalisation of an international human rights agenda have engendered expectations about businesses’ social duties that have led to more expansive approaches to CSR. NGO campaigns of the 1980s and 1990s, for instance, to call transnational corporations (TNCs) to task for their roles in human rights abuses, worker exploitation or their support for corrupt regimes in the developing world, or the social movement campaigns of the 2000s to compel firms to contribute more to poverty alleviation and sustainable development have all been

118   S. Cornelissen part of a bigger process of norm construction around social rights and obligations in the era of heightened neoliberal capitalism. Over the years, there has been an extensive process at the international level aimed at codifying these roles and expectations. Inter-­governmental organisations, multilateral stakeholder groups or international business associations have produced a myriad of declarations or codes of conduct for ethically responsible business, while numerous national governments, particularly in the industrialised world, have introduced domestic legislation setting out standards of appropriate corporate behaviour. The UN Global Compact has been the most ambitious and extensive multilateral framework, but it followed on, and was succeeded by, a whole range of other agreements and charters. Early examples of multilateral attempts to establish codes of corporate conduct, for instance, include discussions in the 1970s in the International Labor Organization and the Organisation of Economic Co-­operation and Development to develop rules for TNCs. By the beginning of the 2000s, several European governments and the European Union itself adopted legislation that has made good governance a condition for their corporations active in their own borders, as well as in other countries (see Ruggie 2007; Segerlund 2005 for overviews). Through these various processes, CSR has become more directly linked to an international discourse about human rights and obligations and related assumptions about the redistributive functions of corporations. CSR is now expected to be a normal aspect of business, but implicit within this expectation is an understanding that firms ought to play active roles in the global political economy and that through this they acquire statuses as global citizens (also see Banerjee 2008). Notably, therefore, contemporary ideas of CSR are premised not only on a far greater degree of responsibility, but also mutuality, since corporations now also expect to have some say in how money provided for social programmes is actually spent. Indeed, on platforms such as the World Economic Forum, some of the most influential corporate players have introduced notions of ‘global corporate citizenship’ to reflect the role which they assume large firms are starting to play in the international arena, sharing functions of cooperation or governance in areas that have traditionally been the domain of the state (i.e. the global economy, social development infrastructure, the environment, global public health and even security) (see Schwab 2008). The neoliberal foundations of contemporary notions of CSR are also significant. Today, with the centrality of the private sector in public life almost natur­ alised, expectations around CSR is linked to a big range of corporate, as well as consumer, spheres and issues. Changing values around consumerism and politics have reinforced this. Corporations themselves use the language of stakeholders, implying that their prime focus of accountability no longer includes only shareholders, but also a wider range of groups (or communities) upon which they have an impact. Thus, it is standard and obligatory procedure for corporations these days to set up CSR divisions. Glossy annual reports also feature community or outreach programmes, showcasing social investments and highlighting budget lines dedicated to social development.

Corporate social responsibility and agency   119 While the expansion of CSR has been notable and has had important ramifications for the global political economy, there are many troublesome aspects to both the idea and its praxis. The first relates to the nature and meaning of CSR. Many of CSR’s critics have noted that its scope is usually so wide, ranging from corporations’ commitments to respect employee rights to broader, but imprecise, goals to contribute to environmental and economic sustainability, that the actual measurement of CSR achievements becomes difficult. Institutional frameworks for CSR codification and implementation at the international level, as a result, become multiplicitous and vaguely defined (Blowfield 2005a). Second, corporate motives for CSR are often questioned. In a strident critique, Banerjee (2008: 51) characterises CSR discourses as: ‘ideological movements that are intended to legitimize the power of large corporations’, and rather than bringing social emancipation, as promised in the discourse, they actually limit the capacities of external stakeholders (communities, but also organisations). Others present CSR in less stark terms, but still draw attention to the way in which firms might use CSR as forms of cover-­up or to ease uncomfortable political questions about the negative impacts they have on environments or societies – a practice termed ‘greenwashing’. Thus, many CSR critics consider it to be mere elements of firms’ public relations activities (also see Kallie 2007). Indeed, it is noteworthy that the empirical case body of ‘good CSR practice’ is decidedly smaller than that of ‘bad practice’ (Barkemeyer 2009). It has been particularly in the developing world and in industries such as resource extraction that CSR has gained a negative reputation for being compensatory or silencing instruments with little intention behind them to help engender social development. Cases where the provision of CSR has, in fact, fuelled societal tension (the role of major oil companies such as Shell in the Niger Delta is one such example (see Frynas 2005)) have caused lingering suspicions about CSR’s real purpose in the developing world. At the heart of debates about the motives and actual impacts of CSR is a complex philosophical question: what sort of role can the private sector justifiably be expected to play in the development process? In other words, to what extent can businesses be expected to suspend their primary profit-­seeking mission in the pursuit of a public good? There is also the subsidiary question of how the parameters for that public good are determined? The contemporary framing of CSR in terms of rights and responsibilities has had the effect of producing an impasse, as CSR is implemented under two competing paradigms – one, favoured by non-­governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society organisations, that advances that societies have the right to be acted upon by ethical corporations, and another, prevailing in the business world, that seeks to frame CSR on the basis of certain incentives for firms. With the latter, the ‘business case’ for CSR – the value-­added that the firm could gain from social investments – should always be demonstrated. The ‘business case’ rides on the argument that corporate contributions to societal aspects lead to better (more educated, healthier, happier, more stable) societies that, in turn, create the conditions for better business and higher profits (Blowfield and Frynas 2005).

120   S. Cornelissen The impasse between rights-­based and incentive-­based approaches to CSR has been carried over to the efforts during the past decades to institutionalise international regulatory structures for CSR and has made the establishment of commonly agreed rules difficult (also see Ruggie 2007). While the norm of corporate ethics and CSR more broadly has been widely accepted by governments, INGOs and the business community, the actual translation of those norms into rules has been more complex, affected in part by the unwillingness of the corporate sector to commit to provisions that might limit business expansion and profit opportunities. All of the existing global frameworks for corporate ethics are therefore voluntary. As such, CSR reflects the general difficulties that characterise processes of global norm change and global regulation, i.e. the problem of converting soft law into hard law and changing elastic norms into rules that are enforceable and enforced. One last issue that should be raised is the way in which CSR affects understandings of development and the actors and actor capacities that are usually assumed to be part of the development process. The idea that corporations have a social development function, if taken to its logical endpoint, has a number of implications, not only for the practice, but for the very concept of development. At its most basic, CSR reconfigures received notions of development and changes ideas about who are the primary role players in the development process. And it changes the very vocabulary of development. Corporations with CSR divisions refer to the ‘stakeholders’ in their programmes (distinguished from their shareholders) and ‘beneficiaries’ (different from market target groups). But contained in this linguistic shift are also ideas of who are the rightful recipients of development. While in conventional public (state) development programmes each member of society (or citizen) has the right to claim a stake in that programme, with the introduction of CSR, entitlement is only possible for those explicitly identified as stakeholder by CSR plans. According to Sharp (2006), this changes the moral economy of development itself. Finally, CSR changes the position of the public sector in development, as well as how the development process itself is thought to work. As with the entry of other non-­state actors such as NGOs in the development sector a few decades ago, the rise of CSR implies that the state has failed in its tasks or at least that CSR inserts itself in the spaces where the state’s capacities or presences are weak. The role of corporations is seen to be less in terms of them being providers, but as enablers. There is also an assumption of efficiency; businesses are thought to be better equipped to perform this task, given their established means and goals of operation. As noted by Sharp (2006), while these ideas are highly influential in the development sector today, they are largely untested.

CSR and its dynamics in Africa Corporate social responsibility has gained greater prominence on the African continent over the past decade or so, its diffusion supported by the activities not only of corporations, but also of governments and international organisations. At

Corporate social responsibility and agency   121 the World Summit on Sustainable Development in 2002, for instance, South African President Thabo Mbeki gave CSR the spotlight when he launched, in conjunction with the computer firm Hewlett-­Packard, a public–private partnership to enhance ICT literacy and use in underprivileged areas in South Africa (Mcfalls 2007). Mbeki’s promotion of this particular initiative was part of a growing tendency for African leaders to advocate a bigger role for businesses in social issues. There is also a general momentum in multilateral bodies concerned with African development to encourage the private sector to support growth efforts on the continent. In its 2005 report, for instance, the Commission for Africa noted that businesses should collaborate with governments, donors and others to help alleviate poverty on the continent. The report also encouraged corporations to sign up to internationally agreed codes of conduct (Commission for Africa 2005). Similarly, the secretariat of the New Partnership for Africa’s Development has entreated African businesses to help support the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) on the continent by making financial contributions to the MDGs (Hamann 2006). Corporations themselves, both foreign and African, have also started to profile themselves more as ethically and socially responsible, and most of the largest corporations active on the continent implement some form of CSR programme. These range from HIV/AIDS programmes run for workers in the mining sector by transnationals such as Anglo-­American, worker training programmes in the automotive sector in South Africa by firms like Toyota, the support of micro-­trading networks to empower women by Unilever, to the building of schools and clinics for communities living adjacent to metal processing plants by Mitsubishi Corporation and BHP Billiton (for overviews of some programmes, see Amaeshi et al. 2006; Chahoud et al. 2010; Dolan and Scott 2009; Forstater et al. 2010). Further to this, for African firms, a vehicle that is often used is ethical investment funds and ethical stock indices. In South Africa, for instance, the Johannesburg Stock Exchange set up a Socially Responsible Investment Index in 2004 to report on the sustainability practices of its members (Sonnenberg and Hamman 2006). This followed extensive processes by the private sector in the country to develop consensus on corporate ethics, the drafting of corporate charters and declarations and the development of guidelines for corporations towards so-­ called triple bottom line (i.e. environmental, economic and social) sustainability (see Hamann 2006). Similar activities have occurred in other African countries. Corporations in Mauritius, for example, established the Africa Sustainability Fund and such funds now also exist in Ghana and Egypt (Ford 2010). In addition, within the international arena, many ethical trading and CSR campaigns are framed with Africa as referent. Product RED, for instance, was set up as a consumer-­based programme to raise finance to combat AIDS and other communicable diseases on the continent. Celebrity-­led campaigns, such as Benetton’s ‘Africa Works’, aimed to promote ethical trading and to raise awareness among Western consumers of both the plight and potentials of the

122   S. Cornelissen continent. In the realm of the development industry, numerous new multi-­ stakeholder initiatives have also been established that forge public–private partnerships to deliver ‘development goods’ (such as vaccines and mosquito nets) to African populations. One such example is a programme by the UN World Food Programme, which involves major bilateral donors and corporations helping to develop new strains of crops (grain, rice and so on) in Africa that are more drought-­resistant. What the examples above suggest is that CSR has become an important paradigm for the framing of multilateral development interventions in Africa. More than that, it is now a key way for TNCs to position themselves on the continent, and it also helps shape the objectives and operations of African firms. It structures relationships between the private and public sectors and has some likely influences on policymaking. As regards the latter point, states and intergovernmental organisations on the continent actively seek to draw in the involvement of the private sector in both setting and achieving development objectives. On a discursive level, Africa seems to present a natural testing ground for the enactment of the social development goals in CSR, constituting a terrain where implicit ideas of the continent as a site of deprivation, poverty and underdevelopment determine the tenor of major private and private–public development initiatives (Abrahamsen 2012). Corporations often rationalise CSR interventions as attempts to ameliorate social need, thus presenting themselves as do-­gooders (Richey and Ponte 2012). Yet there are a number of political dimensions to corporate social responsibility in Africa that are often obscured by such overly positive framings of CSR. The first has to do with underlying political questions about the history and place of corporations in the continent’s political economy, big businesses’ relationships to the state as a result of that and expectations of corporations’ larger role in society. It is insightful, for instance, that the roots of CSR on the continent lie in programmes implemented by transnationals who are active in the mining and wider resource extraction sectors. In areas such as the Niger Delta, for example, many of the world’s largest oil corporations (Shell, Chevron, Exxon, Mobil, etc.) have chequered histories, with their operations often criticised for damaging the environment and negatively impacting, and sometimes exploiting, surrounding communities (Frynas 2000). This has set the scene for some expansive CSR programmes implemented by these oil corporations in the region – initiatives which have drawn much criticism from host communities and outside observers as forms of ‘greenwashing’ (see, for instance, Human Rights Watch 1999). Many large mining houses on the continent have come under similar scrutiny and, as a result, have been at the forefront of CSR implementation, although this has been with mixed results (Hamann and Kapelus 2004; Yankson 2010). In recent years, more questions have been raised by INGOs and advocacy groups about the role of CSR in conflict zones. A charge that is often made by such groups is that CSR is used as a cloak for the negative impacts that corporate activity might have in those zones (Banerjee 2001; Idahoso 2002).

Corporate social responsibility and agency   123 Second, an important feature of CSR on the continent is the way in which it is part of a very complex set of dynamics between states, big business and civil society. The debates around CSR in South Africa – the country with the longest history of CSR implementation and the most extensive CSR programmes – are exemplary of this. CSR in that country and the bigger question of the social role of business have been set in terms of two major concerns in the post-­apartheid era: whether corporations should give compensation to society for their apartheid-­era complicities and gains (and if so, how), and what the contribution is that corporations should make to the democratic project (see Fig 2005). ‘Social responsibility’ has therefore been framed in stark political terms from the outset; from the vantage of the government, it is measured as corporations’ participation in social and economic transformation, their contribution towards the achievement of political goals and their role in economic redistribution. In more recent years, these things have been operationalised in targets towards affirmative action and black economic empowerment, and corporations have been required to comply with national legislation designed to promote racially defined equity in the workplace (see Chahoud et al. 2010 for reviews and discussion). This way of approaching corporations’ ethical responsibilities has provoked much defensiveness from the business sector. To avoid the implication that CSR is given as compensation for historical societal debts and to alter the punitive connotations of CSR as used in South Africa, most firms in the country use the term ‘corporate social investment’ (or CSI), evoking more positive imageries of corporations as proactive, benign and moral actors. Independent studies, in contrast, suggest that in South Africa, the ‘business case’ for CSR strongly determines CSR/CSI commitments and its contents (Fig 2005). The South African example is set in a distinctive context, but it is indicative of a third, problematic, aspect of CSR in Africa. It centres on the complexities which notions of corporate responsibility encounter in environments where there is a particular set of conditions that has led to the ownership of resources and where recollections of social histories powerfully shape societal demands to public and private actors. In such settings, CSR’s potential redistributive and redress functions have to be arbitrated by a diverse range of stakeholders, who present competing visions of socio-­economic justice. This, of course, is not bad in itself, but a certain institutional context is required that allows such a space of deliberation on CSR to exist, one which provides the same chances for negotiation to communities as it does for more powerful actors. In other words, by expanding the space for discourse about rights, justice and development, CSR has an inherent enabling social potential, but it needs to be embedded within an enabling context. In international debates, the idea that corporations are one political actor participating on the same footing with other social groups, and that CSR is one aspect of democratic politics among these groups, has given shape to the concept of ‘political CSR’ (see Scherer and Palazzo 2007). This concept emphasises CSR’s emancipatory and normative potentials, particularly for societies. The experience of CSR in Africa thus far suggests that this potential is mediated and sometimes constrained by material,

124   S. Cornelissen as well as institutional, realities. As far as practical implementation is concerned, cases of CSR across the continent have shown both the positive and negative possibilities that engagements between societies and the private sector can have: by acting as development agents, corporations give opportunities to targeted societies that the latter would not often have had. However, there has been decidedly less recourse for societies to act upon the private sector (also see Idemudia 2011). One final aspect of CSR’s role in Africa relates to CSR as an emerging global governance structure and the consequences it might bring for African legislative and judicial systems and, through this, African agency. From the perspective of the private sector, many corporations active on the continent have started to participate in frameworks such as the Global Reporting Initiative and the UN Global Compact. The latter’s institutionalisation on the continent, in particular, has intensified over the past years (Rieth et al. 2007). The voluntary nature of frameworks such as the UN Global Compact explains their popularity among the private sector, but it also means that their success is limited to the compliance of signatories. Many observers have criticised the apparent gap between the ideals and intentions of voluntary frameworks and the actual workings of CSR programmes. For critics, while existing frameworks hold some promise, they should be enhanced beyond norm development to actual conditions of implementation (Adeyeye 2011). Further, some lament the fact that voluntary frameworks offer few opportunities to hold firms to account for their actions – the very purpose of CSR. This is particularly important in relation to the accountability of the private sector once they enter the development domain. Given that corporations are already playing a large role in this aspect of African life, the lack of systematic regulation over their activities in this domain raises not only major political, but also ethical, questions (also see discussion by Blowfield 2005a). The debate about the extent to which norms (or soft laws) ought to harden, however, remains a contentious one in the general CSR arena (see Ochoa 2011; Ruggie 2007). There is another side to the implementation and governance of corporate ethics and norms, which has direct implications for the agency and leeway of African states. There has been a growing sense among the leadership on the continent that there is a need to devise legal instruments around CSR (Emeseh 2008). This has been against the backdrop where, particularly in the extractive industries, corporations have often been accused of actions that have harmed host communities. Thus, there has been a normative compulsion for many African states to monitor and regulate corporate activities. There have, however, also been fiscal and economic incentives, since such regulation often involves the direct taxation of corporations. The result has been a complex regulatory context shaped by competing interests: on the one hand states’ attempts to lay down rules for good corporate governance, particularly for TNCs, risk prompting disinvestment from such corporations. The Nigerian Government’s longstanding idea of introducing a CSR bill that will compel corporations to spend 3.5 per cent of their profits on CSR programmes has, for instance, met with stiff resistance from the private

Corporate social responsibility and agency   125 sector. Similarly, over the past number of years some of South Africa’s major TNCs have moved their headquarters abroad, partly to deal with what has been viewed by big business in the country as overly stringent rules for labour standards (Fig 2005). On the other hand firms have tended to use CSR to depoliticise their roles in maintaining or enhancing economic inequalities on the continent. These have created the conditions for the relatively frail institutionalisation of corporate regulation at the continental level. The continental human rights governance architecture – embodied in entities such as the African Union’s African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights – is still in nascent shape. Further, there has, so far, been weak compliance in national legislation with international frameworks, and where some states have developed strong laws, these have tended to be weakly implemented (see Amao 2008 for a review and discussion). Thus far, too, international regulatory mechanisms and the norms that underpin them have mostly been framed by actors outside of the African continent. A key question that CSR raises for African states, therefore, is not only how they can improve continental regulatory structures for the private sector and the extent to which national legislation could be aligned with international pro­ cesses, but, indeed, how African states can productively participate in intergovernmental processes around CSR to better reflect Africa’s interests. What, in short, would a global CSR regime look like that had Africans more centrally placed as agents? Three ideas might be offered, based on current dynamics. The first centres on the emergent notion of ‘strategic CSR’, which conveys the idea of CSR as a site of strategic engagement between actors, where terms around, for instance, new investments are defined in relation to social development objectives. In this regard, African governments could seek to engage with TNCs in a more targeted fashion, where pragmatic expectations about corporations’ contributions to social development processes are part of investment negoti­ ations. For their part, corporations could incorporate CSR programmes into investment plans that are offered to governments. Second, and relatedly, political cooperation could take place in the context of Africa’s regional economic communities to extend, deepen and harmonise regulatory conditions around CSR on the continent. Third, discussions around CSR could become part of the rapidly expanding south–south cooperation agenda and the interaction between Africa and some of the major emerging economies. The example cited at the start of this chapter concerning Chinese corporations’ declarations to adapt good corporate practices is a first step in what could be a process of elaborating rules that govern the role of emerging actors in Africa’s political economy. When incorporated into the agendas of forums such as the FOCAC, the Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa Group (BRICS) and the India–Brazil–South Africa Alliance, CSR could give flesh to south–south cooperation in the judicial and legislative domains. As a final word, CSR might help engender new possibilities for regulation, governance and agency by African states, but it also highlights important normative considerations about the African state. An uncomfortable question that

126   S. Cornelissen could be asked, for instance, is how African states can expect standards of good governance from firms, when many of them are hardly good role models themselves? In this regard, although CSR has shown many limitations in terms of its implementation on the continent thus far, a redeeming factor may be that it creates an additional space of discourse for African societies around issues such as political and other rights.

Conclusion Corporate social responsibility has become more prominent over the past decades, due to dynamics within the development industry and the corporate world itself. While in some quarters, the escalation of CSR has been encouraged because of the economic and social benefits it might bring for impoverished societies failed by traditional development structures, in other quarters, CSR has been criticised for always prioritising the interests of corporations – the well-­ resourced in society – ahead of those of the poor. Therefore, while CSR is a strongly influential discourse in the corporate and development worlds and in the international arena at large, the extent to which viewpoints around it are polarised is significant. Africa is a context in which many of the things that CSR appears to newly advocate or promise have long been in operation, even if implicitly so. Yet, CSR does introduce different elements into the African political and policy environments. Overall, the African terrain offers an interesting array of considerations around CSR. The rise of CSR is reflective of certain constitutive shifts in the global political economy. It is useful to ask how these shifts, in and of themselves, affect the continent and how that, in turn, might shape interests towards CSR. In addition, as discussed, CSR affects understandings of development and the actors and actor-­capacities that are usually part of the development process. To date, there has been little understanding of how this aspect of CSR impacts upon host societies, the relationships that result between societies and their states and the position and agency of the state in general. Lastly, the international diffusion of CSR is built upon a process of normative innovation, adjustments and institutionalisation that is starting to shape up into an influential, if still non-­cohesive, governance regime. African actors – state and non-­state – are party to some of these institutionalisation processes, but are, in the main, the objects of the norms that are contained in CSR and of the pro­ cesses that establish them. Greater African participation and agency in the global CSR regime could help to significantly reshape this regime, particularly if this entails the development of programmes or initiatives defined by Africans themselves. One aspect of CSR that will become more important to investigate in the future is not only how it could be a substitute for, and improvement on, the failings of orthodox aid-­giving, but, indeed, whether it has the potential to alter structural balances in the global political economy. In this regard, African voices that question and challenges inherent in power imbalances in CSR could be important.

Part III

States and agency

9 State agency and state formation in Africa David Williams

As a number of contributions to this volume note, a specific focus on African agency is an important corrective to a line of argument that places the actions and intentions of outside agencies at the centre of attempts to explain political and economic processes on the continent. As all the contributions to this volume attest, there is a great deal of African agency, and it has become more conse­ quential in recent years. This chapter discusses a particular kind of agency – that of the African state. It does so not primarily through an investigation of the ability of African states to shape outcomes, very important as this kind of inves­ tigation is, but rather, it focuses on a different set of questions about how we understand something called ‘state agency’ in the African context. The first reason for doing this is that the issue of the agency of the state in Africa has been a pressing one for both African political leaders and external agencies. Right from independence, there were anxieties about the capacity of African states to generate effective agency to pursue various national projects and secure their interests in a difficult external environment. There were also anxieties about the extent to which the actions of individuals and groups within African states could legitimately be understood as the actions of the state in a more general sense. Both of these kinds of anxiety increased as economic and political crisis engulfed many African states. The issue here was not just to do with the capacity of the state, important though that was; it was also to do with the sometimes very fractious relationship between the state and its society. Authoritarian, partisan and sometimes brutal government called into question the idea that the actions of politicians and groups could be understood as the actions of the state in a more general sense. The recent and ongoing crises in Côte d’Ivoire, Libya, Mali and Zimbabwe, for example, show that this kind of anxiety remains. In all of these cases, an important part of the crisis was pre­ cisely the extent to which the use of the apparatus of the state by a leader or small elite group could, or should, be thought of as the agency of the state itself. This leads to the second reason for investigating state agency in Africa, which is that whenever we talk about states acting, both in Africa and elsewhere, we immediately encounter the common objection that states do not act (only people do) and that there is nothing that we can call a specifically state form of agency

130   D. Williams at all (Wight 2004, 2006). In other words, the only kind of agency we can sens­ ibly talk about is the agency of individuals like Robert Mugabe and that any talk of the agency of Zimbabwe is a mystification. Part of the argument of this chapter is that while there are a series of knotty theoretical and philosophical problems about the possibilities of corporate agency, we can approach the problem in a different way. The starting point for this is that whatever the theor­ etical and philosophical arguments about state agency, in our everyday discus­ sions of international politics, we ascribe agency to states all the time (Kaviraj 1997). And, as the example of Robert Mugabe shows, we sometimes deny it, too. This chapter explores what might underpin any such ascriptions. It is con­ cerned, in other words, with sketching out the basis upon which ascriptions of agency to African states takes place. My argument is that discussions of state agency in Africa are based upon a specific understanding of the history of state formation in the West. The view taken here is that this history of state formation is, in some large part, a history of the generation of plausible claims to state agency. In other words, that what we often mean when we talk about making states is, in fact, making them into agents. Typically, this has had three related elements: a claim about ways in which the government and its agents represent their societies; a claim about the capacity of the state to generate effective collective action; and a claim about how state representatives are authorised to act for their state. This picture or image of state agency is deployed in arguments about whether this or that action can legitimately be seen as the actions of the state. But this deployment is often complex and highly politicised. Because it is composed of several claims, there have been arguments about which should be privileged (for example, is repres­ entation more important that authorisation?), and there might be different under­ standings of what each of these components means (for example, is the only legitimate form of authorisation a democratic one?). The broad understanding of what constitutes a specifically state form of agency has also played a very signi­ ficant role in the understanding, on the part of both internal and external actors, of what African states should be like. They have often been judged to have failed to live up to this understanding – to have been deficient in a number of ways – and there have been very significant attempts to remake African states in ways that would make their claim to agency more plausible. One important conclusion to be drawn from this, then, is that the idea of African states as agents is signifi­ cantly shaped by outside agencies in at least two ways. First, Western states and agencies accept or deny claims to state agency with very important con­ sequences. Second, they attempt to make African states into a particular kind of agent through various forms of intervention. The first part of this chapter explores the issue of state agency through the lens of International Relations theory and tries to show that despite theoretical objections to the idea of states as agents, embedded within the discourse of Inter­ national Relations are a series of claims about what makes states into agents and that, in fairly obvious ways, these derive from a (no doubt stylised) account of state formation in Europe. The chapter then shows how this creates a field of

State agency and state formation in Africa   131 possibilities within which what we might call the politics of state agency is played out. It then looks at attempts by both internal and external actors to rework the state in Africa in ways that clearly reflect this stylised account. It concludes by suggesting some further questions that this line of investigation opens up.

The ‘problem’ of state agency In studying international politics it is convenient to think of states as the acting units. At the same time it does violence to one’s common sense to speak of the state, which is after all an abstraction and consequently inan­ imate, as acting. This is an important point for any theory of international relations. (Waltz 1959: 175–176) Waltz is one of the few International Relations theorists to have taken the issue of state agency seriously (at least until Wendt). Generally, though, most scholars of International Relations have been (and continue to be) happy to use the lan­ guage of state agency all the time. The evidence for this is all around us in our everyday discussions of, and teaching about, international politics. This kind of language is so common that it becomes hard to imagine the discipline of Inter­ national Relations without it. The ‘problem’ of state agency is a problem, however, because, when pushed, many scholars abandon the ordinary language of state agency and embrace more or less formal theoretical languages that deny the reality of this agency. The foreign policy analysis tradition opens up the ‘black box’ of the state and explores the agency of its component parts, and one variant of the liberal tradition focuses on the actions and interaction of groups within society (Moravcsik 1993, 1997). It should be noted that this line of ana­ lysis often does not abandon ascriptions of collective or corporate agency, even if it abandons the idea of a specifically state agency (think of ‘executives’, ‘bur­ eaucracies’, ‘interest groups’ or ‘multinational corporations (MNCs)’). More radically, there are those who argue that the state and its agency are reducible to individuals and their interactions (de Mesquita 2009; de Mesquita and Lalman 1992). Others have suggested that talk of state agency really refers to the actions of a few top policymakers or individuals who act on behalf of the state (Krasner 1978). Famously, Gilpin has said that: ‘the state does not really exist’ (Gilpin 1986: 318). There are other more puzzling claims, too, such as Carr’s assertions that state agency is a ‘necessary fiction’ (Carr 1964). There is a final possibility that Waltz, at times, embraces, which is that the assumption of states as unitary actors is simply an analytically ‘useful’ assumption that need not be empirically accurate (Waltz 1979: 1). These varied responses suggest that the ordinary language of state agency is a kind of shorthand. It might be suggested that this is fine, and the fact that most scholars of IR are happy to inhabit this slightly schizophrenic analytical universe suggests that, most of the time, it is deemed relatively unproblematic. On the

132   D. Williams other hand, it raises puzzling questions. For a start, it is hard to know what to say to our students. In International Relations theory, we tell them that states act (and, indeed, have all kinds of intentions – interests, wants, fears, ambitions and so on), and in Foreign Policy Analysis, we abandon this talk and talk of all kinds of other entities acting. Surely, a student might ask, either they do act or they do not act. Second, to describe this as shorthand begs the question as to why we do not write in longhand. As a social science, we ought to say what we really mean, at least a good portion of the time, even if it takes a little longer and is a little less elegant. Third, the very discipline of International Relations is founded on the idea that it is meaningful to talk of states acting: that there exists a realm within which states are the main actors and that one of the key objectives of the discipline is to explain the actions and interactions of states in this realm. Realism, for example, would simply collapse into a discussion of the decisions of foreign policymakers (a kind of political psychology) if it could only talk about individuals (as de Mesquita comes close to doing, albeit employing a par­ ticular kind of political psychology). This has been the terrain within which more self-­consciously philosophical arguments about state agency have taken place. The two most obvious examples are Wendt and Wight. They come to very different conclusions, but they share a common goal of marshalling more general philosophical and theoretical argu­ ments, in order to come to some kind of resolution as to the problem. Wendt famously argues that states are not only ‘real actors’, but they also have a ‘sense of self ’ and that we can legitimately attribute anthropomorphic qualities to them, like desires, beliefs and intentionality; ‘states are people too’ (Wendt 1999: 196, 194). It is exactly these conclusions that Wight takes aim at (2004, 2006: chapter 5). Wight agrees that there is a problem in the way in which the discipline talks about state agency, and he also largely agrees with Wendt about what an agent might be, but he argues that we cannot treat the state as an agent, still less as a person. Rather, the state is an ‘institutional ensemble of structures’, within which power is exercised by agents (2004: 279); ‘. . . [T]he state as a constructed social form, can only act in and through individual action’ (Wight 2006: 188). One can be more or less persuaded by one or other of these arguments. One could also take the view that neither is entirely satisfactory, but that, in principle, some kind of resolution to the problem derived from the employment of philosophical resources is possible. This is not the only way that we can approach the question of state agency, however. As students of politics, we can, and perhaps should, be more attuned to the politics involved in the language of state agency.

The possibilities of state agency in international relations Given that, within the discipline of International Relations, we talk all the time about state agency, it is worth exploring what the basis of such language is, even if we think the claims made in this language are not ultimately philosophically justifiable. To put it another way, we can ask what makes this kind of language even modestly plausible. If it was obviously nonsense, presumably, we would

State agency and state formation in Africa   133 not use it, so there must be some kind of basis for such talk; there must be some, albeit rough and ready, images, claims and concepts that underpin this language. I want, rather summarily, to suggest that there are three kinds of argument. I have drawn from a variety of arguments, but I think they represent the broad terrain. The first revolves around collective identity. Here there is a picture of the state as possessing, at least under some conditions, a kind of collective identity or, at least, essential unity, which allows us to say that when the state (or govern­ ment) acts, that action really is that of the whole state. In Man, the State and War, Waltz says that: ‘the centripetal force of nationalism may itself explain why states can be thought of as units’ (Waltz 1959: 177). Even when national­ ism is not so powerful, he suggests that it can still make sense to talk of states as acting units. First, there are times, particularly during a war, where states take on the character of a single acting unit, when the state ‘mobilizes resources, inter­ ests and sentiments’ (Waltz 1959: 179). Second, he argues, following a par­ ticular reading of Rousseau, the idea of a unitary state works, ‘if the state is a unit that can with some degree of appropriateness take the adjective “organis­ mic” ’ (Waltz 1959: 178). Third, he suggests a slightly different argument, which is that the idea of a unitary state works where ‘some power in the state has so established itself that its decisions are accepted as the decisions of the state’ (Waltz 1959: 177–178). Dissenters from the policy of the state are carried along, either because they are powerless to change it or because they have an attach­ ment to the state that transcends particular policies. Wendt echoes some of this. He says that one of the features that make a state into an agent is the common knowledge of, and commitment to, the idea of the state as a collective. He quotes Weber: ‘one of the important aspects of the “existence” of the modern state . . . consists in the fact that the actions of various individuals is orientated to the belief that it exists’ (Wendt 1999: 219). Included in this are ideas about member­ ship of a collective (an ‘imagined community’), a discourse about the basic prin­ ciples of their collective identity and collective memories that connect them to the state’s members in the past (Wendt 1999: 219). It is fairly easy to see how this kind of argument draws from the history of state formation in Europe, where the rise of nationalism and the possibilities of mass societal mobilisation, par­ ticularly in total war, play an important part in the story of the emergence and consolidation of the modern state. A second and different, although related, sense in which states can be said to act is through the generation of collective action by the bureaucratic and coercive apparatuses of the state. As Wendt says: ‘the institutionalisation of collective action gives corporate agency the unity and persistence that it needs’ (Wendt 1999: 220). It is obvious, although worth stating, that the enormous things that modern states can do are all predicated on the existence of an extensive bureau­ cratic apparatus that transforms the actions and interactions of individuals into actions of an altogether different kind. It does this through the existence of struc­ tures and sets of rules that exist apart from the individuals that inhabit them and  provides the state with its temporal continuity. Running alongside this

134   D. Williams bureaucratic apparatus of the state is a coercive apparatus, which sometimes has the ability to generate action in the face of reluctance or disobedience, as Waltz noted. It might also be that something like this thought is behind Waltz’s rather brief remarks about how the particular anarchic, and thus competitive, structure of international politics ‘selects’ certain kinds of capabilities, especially the ability to make war on a large scale (Waltz 1979: 73–74, 92). The collective action generated through these processes is never complete or unproblematic, and the ideal type of bureaucracy is probably a fiction, as people subvert the rules and roles, and individuals sometimes exercise particular power – a point that emerges forcefully from debates about the ‘agent-­structure problem’ (Wight 1999). Nonetheless, it does seem as if some kind of claim about the actions of the state based on this kind of collective action is part of the way in which the discipline talks about state agency. Again, it is easy to see, here, the familiar story of the rise of the bureaucratic state as part of the process of state formation in Europe. Finally, again related, there is a particular sense in which states are said to act, which is through being represented. Certain persons are authorised to act on behalf of the state, based on certain authorisation rules, and whose actions (sayings and doings) are taken as those of the state. This is the way that we should understand those arguments to the effect that when we say a state acted, we really mean that a few top policymakers acted. It is their position as policy­ makers, derived from certain rules about whom, and under what conditions, someone can become a policymaker, which makes their actions those of the state, rather than just their individual actions. I cannot declare war on another state, but the prime minister can, and when he does so, we are at war. The basic problem here – how it is that one person can act on behalf of a corporate entity? – is an old one. Hobbes, in particular, worried about it, because he needed an account of how individuals could represent the sovereign/collective (Hobbes 1968: chapter 16; Pitkin 1964; Skinner 2005). It is unlikely, however, that the practical business of international politics could even get started without accept­ ing that some persons represent their states and that their actions (signing a treaty, declaring war and so on) are to be understood as something more than simply their individual actions. Even if we wanted to say that there are insur­ mountable theoretical problems with this kind of argument, it does seem as if something like this underpins the discipline’s regular talk about states acting. Again, it is not hard to see in this at least two elements in the history of state for­ mation in Europe: first, the development of new forms of authorisation in response to the need to justify rule in the emerging modern state – this is particu­ larly evident with Hobbes; second, the changing character of these forms of authorisation, particularly the emergence of democratic legitimation, as a result of the varied pressures of nationalism, industrialisation and mass warfare. In all three of these ways that states might be said to ‘act’, it is, of course, people who do things – participate in wars, act within bureaucratic structures and represent states (Jessop 1990). The idea of state agency does not imply that people are not acting. As Wight has put it: ‘common intention, to be realised,

State agency and state formation in Africa   135 must always be mediated by individual interpretation’ (Wight 1999: 128). None­ theless, even if we wanted to take this to mean (as Wight does) that states can never sensibly be said to act, it is still the case that the language of state agency is used all the time and that usage derives from the history of state formation in Europe – the rise of the bureaucratic state, the rise of nationalism and the rise of democracy.

The politics of state agency The disputed election in Côte d’Ivoire in 2010 led to both Gbagbo and Ouattara claiming to be the legitimate representatives of the Ivoirian state and other states and international organisations were confronted with a choice about which claim to recognise. In Libya, the international community was also faced with the question of when, and on what basis, to recognise the claim that the Interim Transitional National Council really represented the Libyan state. In both of these cases, the recognition of one claim was highly consequential for the people of these states. The great benefit of sketching out the different ways in which states can be said to act is that it establishes a field of possibilities that provide the sites for these kinds of political engagements, judgments and arguments. For example, it might be the case that a state is characterised by a strong collective identity, but that the actions of a person claiming to represent that collective would not be seen as the actions of the state, because they had not been properly authorised. Similarly, we can imagine a situation within which the collective actions of the government might, again, not be seen as the state properly acting, as the government had not been authorised in the proper way or did not represent the collective identity of the people of a state (the South African Government under apartheid perhaps). We might also be able to imagine a situation in which a government was indeed recognised as the legitimate representative of the state, but which struggled to achieve much in the way of effective collective action (the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), in recent years, and Somalia, emblematically.) In these ways, we can see that arguments about whether a state can be said to have acted might be intensely political arguments. They enable all kinds of distinctions to be made – between the people and rulers, between prop­ erly and improperly authorised representatives, between capabilities and legiti­ macy – that have real political importance. The politics of arguments about state agency can be seen in three other important ways. First, there may be differences between the internal and external understandings of what constitutes legitimate representation or, at least, there may be external doubts about the legitimate representation of certain people or groups (as in Côte d’Ivoire in 2011). Rulers or whole regimes may be deemed to be illegitimate, even when they might have some capacity for collective action and when they have most certainly created the belief that the state exists (for example, perhaps the Mugabe Government in Zimbabwe and certainly the Gaddafi regime in 2011). It might work the other way, of course, as regimes or rulers are deemed to be legitimate representatives of the states by other states

136   D. Williams (and thus, their actions are understood by other states as the actions of that state), even when internally they may not be understood in this way (for example, military governments after coups, perhaps, and many governments during the Cold War). Second, it might be that there are changes over time in both the internal and external understandings of state agency. So, for example, collective national identity as the basis for legitimate descriptions of state agency is prob­ ably less important today and of more importance are the particular authorisation rules (democracy, for example). Finally, in recent years, as projects of state-­ building have assumed significant importance in international politics, so the various ways in which states might legitimately be said to act has taken on a real practical political importance as Western states and agencies have endeavoured to remake states in various ways that correspond to the ways in which we might think of states acting: the capacity of the state to engage in effective collective action has often been the target of considerable attention, and Western states have tried to institute certain particular authorisation rules, usually forms of democracy. It should be clear, then, that the philosophical problem of corporate agency is only one part of the general problem of state agency. This is not to deny the importance of these arguments or their real intellectual interest; it is to say that beyond some basic answers to the question of whether state agency can be mean­ ingfully talked about, the really important matters are political.

African states and state agency This section looks at the various ways in which arguments about state agency have been deployed in the context of state-­making in Africa. There is a, by now, famil­ iar story about the entrance of newly independent African states into international politics (Jackson 1990; Clapham 1996). Many of the traditional demands of state­ hood were abandoned, while, at the same time, international society treated these states as ‘proper’ states, with some of the rights and obligations that attended this (diplomatic recognition, seats at the UN, right of non-­intervention and so on). In addition to this ‘negative sovereignty regime’, international society took it upon itself to assist these new states in the projects of state-­building and international development (Jackson 1990). Nonetheless, right from the beginning, newly inde­ pendent states in Africa struggled to make themselves into states that might prop­ erly be thought to act, and, over time, Western states and agencies took an increasing interest in the conditions of African agency. In other words, the politics of state agency played a central role in the internal and international politics of many newly independent African states. Collective identity Having assumed power and taken over the colonial state apparatus, many newly independent African leaders embraced the language of ‘nation-­building’. Nyerere, speaking in 1955, was typically forthright:

State agency and state formation in Africa   137 Another objective . . . is to build up a national consciousness among the African people in Tanganyika. It has been said – and this is quite right – that Tanganyika is tribal, and we realise we need to break up this tribal con­ sciousness among the people and to build up a national consciousness. That is one of our objectives towards self-­government. (Shivji 2003) It was precisely the recognition that the people of most African states rarely con­ stituted a nation that animated the project of nation-­building: an attempt to generate a sense of national identity and attachment to the state that would super­ sede the particular forms of identity that existed. This problem was particularly pressing, precisely because the idea of collective identity was so important in the constitution of the state and its agency. It was not just that the people residing within the territory of many African states manifestly did not share a collective identity, it was that claims to the effect that states should be characterised by a collective identity threatened the territorial integrity of many African states. The broad project of nation-­building took different forms, of course, but it was manifest, for example, in education and cultural policy (Palberg 1999). Perhaps most obviously, it also shaped the particular kinds of economic strategy pursued in many African states, where creating the idea of the state in the everyday life of African people was at least one of the drivers for the significant expansion of state intervention in economic relations. It also shaped the elision of the distinction between the nation, party and ‘father of the nation’ that charac­ terised some African states – a claim about both identity and representation. There were, however, always ambiguities and tensions here. First, it was clear that the capacity of the state to impose itself in an effective way upon diverse societies was limited – in some cases, radically so – and declined as economic crises engulfed the continent (see Lemarchand 1972 for an early discussion of this). Second, the discourse of national identity in Africa was complex. There were difficult questions about the relationship to the colonial experience (to do with how much of the language, culture and conceptual apparatus of the metropole to embrace) and to do with the relationship between nationalism and Pan-­Africanism (Faloda 2001). In addition, of course, the legacy of particular forms of identity created by colonial rule was hard to overcome (Mamdani 1996). Despite this, the project of nation-­building was, at least in principle, endorsed by Western states and agencies, even if they had anxieties about the content of certain ideological programmes. This was, in some large part, precisely to do with the picture of what a modern state should look like – which had as one of its key elements a ‘nation’ – and to do with the links that modernisation theor­ ists, in particular, made between the ‘nation’ and the ability of the state to lead a grand project of national development (Latham 2000). As political and economic crisis engulfed the continent in the late 1970s and 1980s, however, so Western states and agencies became altogether less enamoured of talk of ‘nation-­ building’, as it was increasingly seen as a rhetorical cover for the rapacious

138   D. Williams actions of unelected elites (Furedi 1994; Shivji 2003). From a different kind of perspective, there were even those who doubted the whole enterprise of the modern state in Africa, although quite what the alternatives were was not clear (Davidson 1992). In addition, analyses of African politics started to turn away from the classic questions of how, and to what extent, modernity might be instantiated in African states (‘nation’, ‘democracy’, ‘party’, ‘development’) and towards an altogether more gritty analysis of what made African polities tick (Bayart 1993). There are, however, still elements of this in contemporary Western practice in Africa, which suggests that the idea that some kind of national identity remains a part of the ways in which Western states and agencies think about African states, even if it is not explicitly articulated in this way. It can be seen, for example, in the ambiguities about ‘civil society’ in Africa, where certain kinds of associ­ ational life based on affective ties is treated with a good deal of caution com­ pared to more recognisably ‘modern’ groups (Williams and Young 2011). One of the things underpinning this ambiguity is precisely that these affective groups threaten the kind of national collective identity that is seen as one of the charac­ teristics of a modern state. This kind of anxiety can be seen particularly clearly in the way that traditional authorities are dealt with. One of the features of this has been to make traditional authorities subordinate to, and integrated into, the legal and developmental reforms pursued by Western development agencies (World Bank 2007; Williams and Young 2011). ‘Traditional’ authorities may serve certain useful developmental or social functions, but the different basis of their legitimacy and the different ways in which they exercise this authority (through traditional legal and land tenure systems, for example) have to be at least limited, so as to pursue the project of a properly national understanding of society and its relationship to the state. There are also echoes of the project of nation-­building in the current concern with ‘participation’ and ‘ownership’, where eliciting the participation of social groups in the preparation of develop­ ment projects and plans (notably through the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper process) is at least partly designed to generate some kind of (however problematic) national commitment to a national project. For example, in Ghana, ‘groups for consultation were selected based on their ability to build broad legitimacy’ for the Ghanaian Poverty Reduction Strategy, and thus, ‘. . . groups were seen as partners whose support was felt to be necessary for the implementation’ of the Strategy (Government of Ghana 2003: 5). It seems clear, however, that the project of nation-­building, at least as expli­ citly articulated in the period after independence, is now a much less prominent part of the project of African state-­building, and it is certainly a must less promi­ nent part of the discourse surrounding African states. There may be some excep­ tions to this. For example, Paul Kagame has talked about the ‘conscious cultivation of a national identity’ (Kagame 2010: 2). And within Africa itself, there is still a good deal of anxiety in some quarters about the ‘idea of the state’ and its relationship to a collective people. But in general, the idea of collective identity as the basis for legitimate claims to state agency has receded. This is no

State agency and state formation in Africa   139 doubt related to changing sentiments in the West, where the bloody history of nation-­building became a rather awkward subject, and it may be also related to the emergence of concerns about diversity or multiculturalism within Western states and the kinds of institutional and political arrangements conducive to man­ aging this. In its place, Western states and development agencies have become much more concerned with the other two elements of state agency discussed above: collective action and representation. Collective action The problems that African states have had in generating effective collection action are well known. Right from the beginning of the study of postcolonial African politics, the ability of the state to govern effectively – to generate effective action through the bureaucratic and coercive apparatus of the state – has been questioned (Hyden 1983; Fatton 1988; see also Williams 2010). The effectiveness of the African state has been compromised (in the eyes of Western states and many Western commentators, at least) by a number of factors. The mode of governing of many African states – often captured under the much dis­ puted term ‘neopatrimonialism’ – was increasingly cast as corrupt, even when it did enable some African states to provide modes of governing that were relat­ ively enduring, and, certainly, the basic structures of the bureaucratic state did not work to generate effective collective action on anything like the scale imag­ ined at independence. This has been compounded by political instability and economic and fiscal crises, which often corroded the human and physical resources of the state to the point where its governing capacity has been severely compromised (this is not unique to Africa, of course). The coercive apparatus of the state has sometimes functioned reasonably effectively, if brutally, to enforce the decisions of the state on its populace. But even where this has been the case, it is not a substitute for the generation of effective actions through the bureau­ cratic apparatus of the state. This is seen as a problem by many Western states and agencies, because it has led to all kinds of economic crises and because the grandest of grand projects – development – requires a state capable of acting in effective collective ways. The problem of the capabilities of the African state is one that has dominated the actions of Western states and development agencies in Africa right from the 1980s and structural adjustment, although it accelerated in the 1990s with the ideas of good governance and the promotion of ‘democratic transitions’. All kinds of activities have been directed at reforming the state and making it more capable of undertaking effective collective action (I have explored this further in Williams (2008) and Williams (2010)). This has included reforming rules and procedures around government budgeting, for example, or tax collection, the construction of new information collection systems, the reduction of corruption and the reduction of the personalised character of African bureaucracies. It has also involved all kinds of training and ‘capacity building’ programmes for African politicians and bureaucrats (Williams 2008: chapter 5). All this activity

140   D. Williams is about making African states act in the ways that modern states are thought to act, namely through rational bureaucratic procedures that generate effective col­ lective action in the pursuit of certain goals. But in ways that reflect the (rather idealised) history of Western states, so this kind of attempt to generate more effective and capable states has been accompanied by an anxiety about how any such state might relate to its society. Representation The ‘representatives’ of newly independent African states were recognised by international society as having the ability to act on behalf of their states. Indeed, for some years after independence, the internal structures and decision-­making procedures of African states were insulated from international scrutiny (Clapham 1996: 50). Even rulers whose authority to rule was supposedly derived from God, such as Emperor Haille-­Selassie, were not deemed to be ‘illegitimate’ rep­ resentatives, despite these kind of claims being deeply anachronistic to Western states (Clapham 1996: 50). The negative sovereignty regime accepted African rulers and representatives of African states as the legitimate representatives of these states and accepted their actions as the actions of these states. The rather darker side of this was that more powerful states accepted them as legitimate representatives for a host of political and ideological reasons, even when it became clear that it was empirically implausible to suggest that they somehow represented the wishes of the people who inhabited these states or that their rule had, in some sense, been authorised by the people. The one partial exception to this was the regimes in Rhodesia, Namibia and South Africa. Here, the anxiety about these governments was two-­fold. These governments could not plausibly be said to represent the collective identity of these states, and their claims to be representative of their states was questioned, as the basis of their authority was deemed to have violated international norms (Klotz 1995). These governments were accepted as governments by Western states and their ambassadors and presidents were accorded international recogni­ tion (at least some of the time), but it was also increasingly accepted that these governments were illegitimate and that they could not plausibly claim to act on behalf of their states, even when, as in the case of South Africa, they did have the capacity for effective collective action. In more recent times, Western states and agencies have become increasingly concerned with the authorising rules within all African states that generate legiti­ mate representation. This can be seen more obviously in democracy promotion, but it can also be seen in initiatives such as the heavily indebted poor country (HIPC) debt relief and the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) process. There have also been actions taken against regimes that, somehow or another, are not thought to be properly representative (Zimbabwe, for example), and even some of the more respected and supported regimes have experienced pressures to engage in democratic transitions (Ghana and Uganda, for example). In this way, Western states and agencies have demonstrated a very significant

State agency and state formation in Africa   141 concern with the authorisation rules that enable representatives to be legitimately understood as acting for the state. It is clear that the discourses and practices of Western states and development agencies have been significantly shaped by an understanding of the plausible conditions for state agency derived from the history of state formation in the West. Whether this account is entirely consistent is another matter. Clearly, it is heavily informed by a rather idealised account of Western states, where these three elements – collective identity, collective action and legitimate representa­ tion – are thought to go, at least roughly, together. In the context of many African states, however, it is not clear that these elements of Western practice really do go together or, at least, there may be tensions and ambiguities within them. The institutionalisation of democratic politics in divided societies can be highly problematic (as in Kenya, for example). Decentralisation can reduce the capacity for collective action (as can democratic politics). Perhaps the greatest tension here is the role of external agency themselves. European states became ‘agents’ through a complex and often violent process of state formation, and there are good reasons to think that external agents cannot reproduce this history in Africa in any meaningful way. Indeed, it may be counter-­productive, as the processes they are trying to construct involve relations between the government and its society, which can be undermined by the centrality of the relationship between the government and its external donors. These kinds of problems are not unique to Africa. The international community has experienced similar kinds of problems in Bosnia and Afghanistan, for example; and, more generally, it is important to recognise that the model of the state is, indeed, a stylised one, and arguments over state agency are evident in many Western states, too. But it is certainly the case that the politics of state agency have been particularly evident in Africa.

Conclusion The arguments presented here have a number of broader implications. First, that the question of state agency is most emphatically not an esoteric or philosophi­ cal one about which scholars of International Relations can be relatively uncon­ cerned. As I have tried to show, it matters a great deal whether or not a state can be said to have acted. Second, the different kinds of ways in which states might be said to act are out there in the world in the arguments that people have about whether something can be meaningfully described as the actions of a state and in the discourses and practices of Western states and agency in Africa. In other words, the sometimes rather inchoate recognition of the problems and possibilities of state agency that we find in International Relations theory are replicated in the actions of Western states and agencies and in the actions and strategies of African politicians. In both of these cases, they are informed by a particular account of what makes a ‘proper’ state, which is derived from the historical trajectory of Western states. This is not surprising. For all its concern with the realm of inter-­state relations, International Relations as a discipline is

142   D. Williams fundamentally shaped by a particular vision of what a state is and this is, again unsurprisingly, shared by Western states and agencies. The arguments given here also provide a way into debates about Africa and International Relations theory. It is not that African states are totally different, nor is it that they never act. It is that the circumstances of many African states is such that ascriptions of their ‘agency’ is often conditional on and, in some cases, produced and reproduced by international society. In this sense, even something as funda­ mental as their capacity to ‘act’ is often the product of the forces external to themselves; groups, governments and politicians do things all the time in African countries, of course, it is just that the question as to whether this is really the state acting is subject to a good deal more scrutiny than is the case with Western states. The final point to note is that the arguments presented here might have some bearing on the broader issue of agency in Africa. One possibility is that all ascription of agency, not just those in relation to the state, are shaped by struc­ tures of understanding – stylised accounts of what counts as acting under what kinds of circumstances. If this is right, it also seems likely that these will be composed of different elements that provide the site for arguments and contesta­ tion. The question of individual agency, for example, is one about which signi­ ficant arguments can be had, in terms of what really counts as agency and under what circumstances we would describe the actions of a person as a manifestation of their agency; liberal political theory has been obsessed with this kind of ques­ tion. One implication of this is that whenever we attribute agency – in Africa and elsewhere – we are also partaking in the kinds of arguments that people have about what constitutes agency and acknowledging the significance of African agency means engaging with these kinds of arguments.

10 Elusive agency Africa’s persistently peripheral role in international relations Stefan Andreasson

Introduction Twenty-­first century international relations are characterised by a transition from a bipolar to a multi-­polar world, via a moment of American unipolarity in the wake of the Cold War. Whereas shifts in power and influence between Western states and their main competitors among the emerging markets – most notably China – have received much scholarly attention, there has been decidedly less attention paid to how this transformation of the international order is affecting states in marginalised regions. This chapter focuses on implications for an African continent which, despite increasing natural resource demands and improved prospects of economic and market growth, remains peripheral and relatively powerless in international affairs. A ‘new scramble for Africa’ notwithstanding, the continent’s continued marginalisation – defined in terms of standard economic and developmental indicators, such as GDP per capita, trade and investment flows, educational and technological advance and levels of poverty – is a key indicator of persistently weak state agency. This derives from weak state capabilities, which contribute to an inferior position in the international system of states. This explains the difficulty for African states in taking advantage of the shifting dynamics of international relations, the drivers of which remain largely exogenous to Africa. This remains the case, even for a regional power like South Africa beset by serious challenges to its (internal) capabilities and, therefore, external agency. We can draw important lessons from Africa and South Africa regarding the continuity of north–south relations and the enduring relevance of state-­centric perspectives on international relations, even in an era of great transformation where non-­state actors and non-­state forms of agency proliferate. Alas, the Thucydidean perspective on power relations remains highly relevant, in particular for those on the margins of the international system.

State agency in international relations This chapter examines agency as exercised by African states in an emerging markets century characterised by an increasingly influential role of non-­Western

144   S. Andreasson states in the global political economy and in the international system of states more generally. Following Grieco (1988) in downplaying sharp distinctions between classical realism and neo-­realism to instead emphasise continuity across these approaches to international relations and drawing in particular on the seminal contributions of Waltz (1979, 2001), agency is here defined as the agency of sovereign states. It refers specifically to the ability of states, as the primary actors in the international system, to generate and deploy a range of capabilities (hard and soft) in the pursuit of their national interest. This national interest, ultimately, is for states to improve their relative positions in the international system of states. This is crucial as the distribution of capabilities across states, and, consequently, their relative positioning in the hierarchy of states constituting the international order at any given time, is the key indicator of states’ abilities to pursue a range of subsidiary interests, such as ensuring domestic stability and promoting socio-­economic development. Thus, the main question here is not what kind of agency is exercised by African actors, but rather how much and whether prospects for more or stronger agency may be improving. State agency is not the only relevant form of agency, as other contributions to this volume demonstrate.1 But the capabilities-­cum-agency of sovereign states remains, at least in the international system, the most important form of agency for understanding the dominance and centrality of some states and the subservience and marginalisation of others, as well as the probability of stability, ascent and descent within the system. Whether emphasising military capabilities and incidences of war, as is Waltz’s main concern, or examining economic capabilities and national development, which is the key focus here, the international system remains a self-­help system. This claim is plainly demonstrated by the stark inequalities and injustices that remain a pertinent feature of the international order. The self-­help nature of the system means that ‘the power position of the nation is paramount to all other considerations’ (Dunn 1937: 13, quoted in Waltz 2001: 160). The nature of the system, in turn, suggests that the primary measures of successful state agency are the enhancement of hard and soft state capabilities – military power, technological and economic development, social stability, cultural influence, etc. – resulting in any given state’s ascent in the international hierarchy of states. A parsimonious focus on the sovereign state and its relative position in the international system provides, in one sense, only a partial picture, and Waltz (2001: ix) clearly recognises that: ‘[e]xplaining international outcomes requires one to examine the situations of states, as well as their individual characteristics’. Wendt (1987: 341), too, acknowledges this, by arguing that neo-­realists integrate state-­centric and systemic approaches to explicitly ‘recognize the causal role of both state agents and system structures’. Indeed, Waltz’s approach is holistic, and he concludes his enduring contribution to international relations theory – his three images of international politics as developed in Man, the State, and War – with the following observation:

Elusive agency   145 The third [system] image describes the framework of world politics, but without the first [individual] and second [state] images there can be no knowledge of the forces that determine policy; the first and second images describe the forces in world politics, but without the third image it is impossible to assess their importance or predict results. (2001: 238) For Waltz and other neo-­realists, the internal development of states are relevant only insofar as they can alter the relative capabilities of states, which can then be deployed to change a state’s position in the international order better and thus take advantage of global political and economic changes, but not to change the nature of the system itself. This is what Hobson (2001: 400–401) refers to as the ‘continuity assumption’; Waltz’s ‘principal observation . . . that the conduct of IR has never changed’ (emphasis in original). State capability, whether it is strong or weak, is important – as the subsequent examination of African states, collectively, and South Africa, in particular, makes clear – because understanding shifts in state capabilities provides us with a ‘positional picture’ of states and their relative abilities to influence the international system to meet their needs. But since the nature of the international system is unchanging, characterised by self-­help and inter-­state competition, uniformity in international outcomes (i.e. the unchanging nature of the system) cannot be explained by variation in domestic characteristics (Hobson 2001: 401).

The weak African state Across the entire range of conventional measures of development (and the distribution of capabilities and attendant position in the hierarchy of states that such measures indicate), whether measuring technological and military capabilities or the economic, educational and health indicators comprising the United Nations Development Programme’s Human Development Index, African states are clustered towards the bottom and, therefore, on the margins of the international system. While all African states are obviously not alike, the generalisation that African states are relatively weak is empirically justifiable and a worthy case of investigation. After all, African experiences with marginalisation and lack of development are relatively uniform when compared to other regions. While ­Africa’s economic and political conditions have in some respects improved, the continent remains decidedly marginalised in terms of world trade and global investment flows, as well as by its very large share of the world’s poor and least developed countries (Soko and Lehmann 2011: 101). This marginalisation, in turn, explains continuing attempts to understand Africa’s persistent developmental difficulties and impediments to pursuing national (and regional) interests in the international arena (see, for example, Kornegay and Landsberg 2009; Qobo 2010). Following Jackson and Rosberg’s (1982, 1986) account of the lack in post-­ independence African states of the essentials of statehood – that, in Africa,

146   S. Andreasson statehood is often juridical (i.e. de jure recognised by international actors), rather than empirical (a de facto ability to exercise sovereignty) – it is evident that, in a self-­help system where strong states are able to more effectively pursue their national interests, we can understand why Africa remains peripheral by looking at why African states are weak and, therefore, less able to exercise effective agency. Their description of the weakness of African states might today appear harsh, even condescending. But similar problems persist a quarter­century later: In Tropical Africa, many so-­called states are seriously lacking in the essentials of statehood. They are ramshackle régimes of highly personal rule that are severely deficient in institutional authority and organisational capability. The writ of government often does not extend to all parts of the country. . . . Most African states are also, of course, highly dependent on the external world for the material aid needed for their development. Millions of ­Africans in more than a few countries are dependent on food aid for survival. In short, many states in Tropical Africa are as yet far from credible realities. (Jackson and Rosberg 1986: 1–2) These remain characteristics that are generally more evident in African countries, than among their international competitors. The writ of government throughout the state’s territory – a core attribute of a sovereign state – often remains elusive (Herbst 2000). A propensity for destructive factional competition for the spoils of government often occurs along communal lines, irrespective of whether governments are democratically elected or not (Lindberg 2003). Aid dependence characterises relations with external actors, with several African states unable to properly feed their populations without receiving external assistance. Following the realist logic applied in a self-­help system of states, this weakness ultimately places in doubt the viability of many African states as enduring sovereign entities, as the descent of some into ‘failed states’ demonstrates.2 Herbst’s (2000) account of Africa’s problem with state-­building applies from pre- to postcolonial eras and carries serious implications for those who seek to improve Africa’s role in international affairs, as it is an account determined partly by geographic, ecological and demographic factors less amenable to reform than political and economic ones. Africa’s very low population densities, as measured over the last 500 years in comparison to other regions of the world, and in particular those regions in which strong state systems developed (most notably Europe), means that African states have found it exceptionally difficult to extend authority from central administrative cities or regions throughout the entirety of their territories. Herbst’s argument identifies a fundamental weakness at the heart of the African state, the origins of which antedate both politics and socio-­economic organisation. However, Herbst (2000: 257) is also critical of the (Western) historical emphasis placed on the sovereign state as the necessarily fundamental unit of

Elusive agency   147 socio-­political organisation in the international system. In particular, he is sceptical of employing realist assumptions (by which, he seems to mean neo-­realist theory á la Waltz) to account for the historical development of the state in Africa and, therefore, also Africa’s particular problems with state-­building in the modern era. He notes that the general weakness of the African sub-­system of states means that cooperation, rather than conflict, has characterised inter-­state relations, resulting in relatively few inter-­state conflicts, as compared to the prevalence of such conflicts during the emergence of the European state system. The relative lack of external threats of force from neighbouring states generated less impetus in Africa for the development of strong states. This fact ‘directly challenges traditional realist assumptions about the anarchical nature of international society and the importance of the threat of force’ (Herbst 2000: 16). But the African situation actually reinforces realist claims. The troubled history and nature of African state-­building is an important pre-­systemic predictor of Africa’s persistent lack of effective state agency and persistent margin­ alisation, which, in turn, become negatively reinforcing attributes of African states. As Herbst implies, it may well be true that a system in which non-­state entities were the primary agents would benefit Africa. But this is a normative claim that disregards reasons why the state remains the primary unit of the international system. It also disregards whether it is at all likely that any other unit of socio-­political organisation could eclipse the state and produce a more stable, equitable or somehow mutually beneficial system of international relations better suited to addressing needs of marginalised and relatively powerless regions. Instead, African governments have consciously abandoned their pre-­colonial past and its alternative forms of socio-­political organisation: The attachment by Africans and others to the current state system is extraordinary, given that even the parties to the 1885 Berlin Conference noted explicitly that they reserved the right to change principles ‘as experience may show to be expedient’. (Herbst 2000: 258) African leaders realise that they have emerged independent into an international system in which strong states reap the rewards. No states occupying dominant or ascending positions in the international order, whether the US, China, India, Russia or Brazil (the BRICs), are likely to cede state sovereignty to any significant degree where vital national interests are concerned, irrespective of their recognition of, and participation in, regional and global organisations at the supra-­national level. Nationalism is a notable force in these countries. Strong, and therefore successful, states in a state-­centric system are those with significant capacity to determine the shape and nature of the system. But their status as regional or global powers means that they have no major incentives to change the system in ways that erode the significance of the state strength on which their influence is primarily based. If the European Union (EU) is the prime example of transition to supra-­national governance, its current economic crisis and the

148   S. Andreasson increasingly evident manifestations of fundamental problems inherent in its economic and political integration makes a return to a greater preference for state sovereignty and agency more likely. Powerful EU member states may also reconsider and perhaps repatriate aspects of their sovereignty already ceded to EU institutions. Kagan (2003) argues that just as the US moved from initially relying on strategies of the weak to employing strategies of the powerful as it developed into a superpower, former European powers (especially the EU) are now increasingly relying on the strategies of the weak. These are strategies which seek to restrain unilateral state agency by instead emphasising international law and norms, as well as appeals to universal rights and moral considerations, arguably the softest of soft power. These strategies of the weak are an indicator of weaker state agency, and they are, of course, the primary strategies employed by African states in foreign policy, trade and other diplomatic negotiations, standing in sharp contrast to the more assertive behaviour of powerful developing states like China or Russia.

The enduring relevance of the state While Spruyt’s (1996) seminal analysis of the emergence and eventual dominance of the sovereign state in Europe recognises that ‘change in the nature of the constitutive units of the international system’ is not always slow and incremental, but can indeed occur suddenly in a chaotic and revolutionary manner (Herbst 2000: 260–261), recent experiments with supra-­nationalism do not suggest an approaching tipping point where transformational upheaval results in units other than the sovereign state dominating the international system. If anything, we are likely to see an increasingly pronounced reliance on, and safeguarding of, state sovereignty (understood as national authority over, and autonomy of, policy choices). This is a tendency fuelled not only by rational considerations conditioned by the dynamics and incentives of a state-­centric self­help system, but also fuelled by the re-­emergence of isolationist and otherwise defensive tendencies in an environment of global economic crisis where increased uncertainty and aversion to risk make appeals to the state, rather than to abstract international organisations, more appealing to leaders and peoples alike. Herbst is correct in identifying fundamental impediments to African state-­ building and the effective exercise of African state agency, but he overstates the degree to which alternatives to the state system are apt to emerge, even at the level of the African sub-­system. New states like South Sudan may be generated by internal conflict, but an eclipse of sovereign states themselves is unlikely. Contra Wendt (2003), the ‘World State’ or any other world government is certainly not inevitable. So much of what is written about globalization is wrong when applied to Africa, precisely because leaders have actually constructed more institutions

Elusive agency   149 to mediate the pressures from international markets and cross-­national flows of people compared to any time in the past. . . . Far from the nation-­state melting away in the face of pressures for globalization, national boundaries, broadly defined, are, in a number of ways, more relevant than ever before. Indeed, despite the enormous emphasis on global political and economic forces in the literature . . . the geographic and demographic facts on the ground are still crucial to understanding political processes in Africa. (Herbst 2000: 252–253 [emphasis added]) Weak states are difficult to strengthen, and they remain the African norm in an international context, where state strength also remains a crucial determinant of the ability to effectively exercise state agency and to pursue development and other basic needs. We demonstrably exist in a world where state weakness engenders marginalisation, subordination, underdevelopment and, ultimately, suffering. This remains so, despite an increasing, if reversible, interconnectedness of the global economy and importance of international and regional organ­ isations, such as the United Nations (UN), World Trade Organisation (WTO), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), the EU and the African Union (AU). Whether or not one agrees with Davidson’s (1992: 290) lamentation that the nation-­state is a ‘curse’ and constitutes ‘a shackle on progress’ for postcolonial societies (in Africa), states, like the poor, remain with us. Waltz (1979: 95) famously considered the state more durable than the multinational corporation. Therefore, it is futile to suggest that a theory of international relations positing state capabilities and strength as crucial for understanding why – echoing Thucydides – the strong benefit, by doing as they can, and the weak suffer, as they must, is misconstrued, because it shows that states which are manifestly deficient in those capabilities and strengths which the theory posits as crucial are, in fact, doing so poorly relative to stronger states, just as the theory predicts. And ­Africa’s historical experiences of international relations demonstrate the value of the Thucydidean analytical lens. Indeed, the underlying assumption here is that throughout the course of history, stronger parties dominate weaker ones to thereby shape the international environment according to their own interests. This understanding of international history as a series of recurring relational patterns can be traced from Thucydides to Huntington and stands in contrast to teleological accounts of history in Hegel, Marx and Fukuyama.3 Dunn (2000), Malaquias (2001) and others have accused realists (and Western theories of international relations generally) of simply analysing Africa through a Western historical and cultural prism, which takes for granted the Westphalian system of sovereign states, thereby failing to understand that African history and socio-­political organisation is different from that of the West, that nation-­states are not compatible with African realities and that therefore Western theories of international relations are of little use in understanding Africa’s role in international affairs (see Brown 2006a). The opposite is, in fact, the case. State capabilities and strength remains central to the pursuit of national interest, however

150   S. Andreasson defined and irrespective of the degree such interests are sometimes mediated through international institutions.4 Thus, Africa’s widespread problems of weak, by comparison to other regions, or, in the case of so-­called failed states like Somalia, even lacking empirical statehood (stemming from external, as well as internal, factors) explains its historical experiences of colonial domination and neo-­colonial subordination, as well as a general inability to influence current shifts in the international order to better meet Africa’s interests and needs. Quite contrary to Chabal and Daloz’s (1999) claim that ‘Africa works’, albeit not along the lines presumed by state-­centric Western theories of politics and international relations, most African countries do not work well in terms of stacking up to international competition and maintaining the internal order necessary for effectively pursuing long-­term national interests, as demonstrated by Africa’s continued marginalisation and relative lack of socio-­economic development (Soko and Lehmann 2011). And whether stronger regional cooperation, or even consolidation of a continent-­wide organisation like the AU, would in the long-­run be desirable for promoting Africa’s role internationally and its developmental needs domestically, the relative inefficiency of regional and continent-­ wide bodies is not the cause of internal weaknesses in African countries, but instead one additional symptom of such state weakness. Whereas China is able to exercise a sufficient degree of sovereignty over a very large geographical territory and population, the US can do the same and even the EU can do so where specific competences have been delegated to it by its sovereign member states; however, most African states can generally do nothing of the sort or at least very seldom to a comparable degree (see Kornegay and Landsberg 2009). India displays many similar weaknesses to those of African states. But India is nevertheless able to able to effectively assert itself as one of the world’s major emerging markets with an increasing influence in international forums and affairs, because it is a single state of considerable size with sufficient nodes of rapid economic and technological growth and expansion. Africa, on the other hand, remains a collection of many generally weak states operating within an African framework (the AU), which is a relatively weak actor in terms of international affairs. The most productive way to think about improving Africa’s role and strengthening African agency in the international arena is to place first, in the order of priorities, a strengthening (internally) of state capabilities, however difficult, given Africa’s marginal role in the international system. In this sense, a comparative analysis of state and capacity building offers a valuable complement to our understanding of Africa’s role in the international order, as provided by theories of international relations (see Herbst 2000).

Africa in the emerging markets century High hopes have been pinned on African states being able to enhance their agency as manifested primarily in trade and development-­related diplomatic negotiations in a new era characterised by shifts in economic and political power. This era is producing a new multi-­polar order, in which major emerging

Elusive agency   151 markets – notably China and India – are becoming increasingly powerful actors in the international system. However, given African state weakness and the persistence of a state-­centric self-­help system, the hypothesis to be evaluated when examining Africa’s international relations, and those of its strongest states, should be as follows. Key actors in the international system are states and because African state agency is weak (because African states share few of the characteristics of ascendant major emerging market states), we should expect that African states remain decidedly peripheral in international affairs. Furthermore, this is the case even for regional powers like South Africa in comparison to major emerging powers like the BRICs. That Africa should remain peripheral, with the footprint of African agency on the emerging order hardly discernible, is not because Africa is uninteresting or irrelevant to established and emerging powers. On the contrary, Africa has remained peripheral, despite a greatly renewed interest in Africa’s natural resources driven by economic growth in emerging markets and multinational corporations looking for growth potential in a saturated global marketplace (see Andreasson 2011) and despite a greatly renewed interest in Africa as a potential breeding ground for terrorism in the wake of 9/11 and commencement of the US-­led War on Terror (Whitaker 2010). In terms of global resource demands and security concerns, Africa remains firmly on the map. But in the context of a shifting economic and political gravity away from the West, Africa’s continued marginalisation stands out. To understand why Africa seems left behind, we must examine how asymmetric relations are perpetuated and how they disadvantage the exercise of African state agency internationally. While Africa’s neo-­colonial ties with former European colonial masters and the US are well documented, it is increasingly important to examine evolving forms of south–south cooperation between African states and organisations and corresponding actors elsewhere in the developing world and, in particular, Africa’s rapidly expanding relations with China as the major new entrant on the African scene (Alden 2005). Africa–India relations are less developed, but rapidly evolving and increasing in importance, given India’s role as second only to China in transforming the global economy (Mawdsley and McCann 2010). Furthermore, we cannot understand Africa’s external relations without understanding why individual African states find it difficult, or are unwilling, to articulate common positions when interacting with external actors at the international level (Kornegay and Landsberg 2009). African states are ‘confronting the geo-­political and geo-­economic trade winds’ generated by the current power shift in the international system from west to east and south (Kornegay and Landsberg 2009: 171): The substantive cut-­and-thrust of developed-­developing world interactions are between the larger developing world ‘emerging power’ economies and the developed world, with Africa’s ‘least developed’ economies sidelined even as the emerging powers seek to gain a foothold on the continent. (2009: 186–187)

152   S. Andreasson Martin (2008: 352) notes that Africa lacks ‘middle powers’ or ‘semi-­peripheral’ states, perhaps with the exception of South Africa. But even in the case of South Africa, ‘the evidence is not . . . encouraging’, and, ironically, the more advanced nature of South Africa’s economy, as compared to others’ economies in Africa, means that South Africa is more likely to be disproportionately hit by competitive exports from the world’s major manufacturing competitors, notably the BRICs (Martin 2008: 353). Kornegay and Landsberg (2009) also identify what they understand to be a puzzle, but which refers, in fact, to expected developments. Why, they ask, should an African continent containing less developed countries, rather than emerging markets or powers of significant stature, yet again become the focus of political and economic competition by powerful states (Kornegay and Landsberg 2009: 172)? The answer is that powerful states will act where, and as, they can. Given weak African states, asymmetrical power relations favour external actors, whose demand for natural resources and interest in new markets ensures continued attention towards Africa. Because African states are individually weak and cannot act as a bloc to effectively balance and thereby confront major powers outside Africa, they are less likely to extract genuinely beneficial deals in negotiations on trade and development. This is a key indicator of the weak agency of African states. For Kornegay and Landsberg (2009: 173), the crucial problem is that Africa lacks ‘continental sovereignty’, i.e. the ability to act as a bloc – a function which, they argue, the AU ought to fulfil. But they fail to consider that other major actors do not possess ‘continental sovereignty’ either, but nevertheless possess strong state capabilities. The EU can, at times, act effectively, but that depends primarily on the sovereign strength of its constituent parts. Perhaps it could be argued that because African states are weak, they have no choice but to pursue strategies aimed at supra-­national agglomeration of power – something resembling ‘continental sovereignty’. But this is not likely to be a winning strategy in a state-­centric system rewarding strong states and certainly not regional bodies constructed on weak states. The AU’s lack of effectiveness should not be surprising, given the weak foundations on which the organisation rests. Kornegay and Landsberg (2009: 184) are troubled by individual African states pursuing their separate interests within the AU and in intercontinental forums like the New Asian African Strategic Partnership (NAASP), but such efforts by individual states are to be expected. If the EU –comprising states with quantitatively and qualitatively better sets of capabilities – finds it difficult to coordinate and act as a ‘sovereign’ entity, we should expect even greater difficulties facing the AU. Kornegay and Landsberg’s argument seems to implicitly support a kind of ‘top-­down’ regionalisation in Africa, in order to make the AU a more effective actor on the global stage and to counteract advantages of ‘the one’ (i.e. China) bargaining with ‘the many’ (African states) (see Shaw et al. 2009: 35–38). But such an aspiration might be tantamount to betting on a losing horse, given difficulties with supra-­ national experiments elsewhere and also considering Africa’s prevalent and relative lack of state strength.

Elusive agency   153 For Cornelissen (2009: 24), it remains unclear whether Africa’s increasing ‘self-­awareness and assertion’ in the international system will, or can, result in a ‘tangible repositioning’ of the role and status of African states in the international order, as a ‘profusion of Southern-­based multilateral bodies has in fact weakened rather than bolstered Southern solidarity’. Cornelissen’s scepticism dovetails with the contention herein – that Africa remains peripheral in international relations, despite African countries’ at times vigorous involvement in networks intended to boost south–south cooperation and the role of developing regions generally. While north–south relations have undoubtedly shifted, little has changed for African countries negotiating their interests in an international arena characterised by asymmetrical distribution of capabilities and power stacked in favour of Africa’s external competitors. There is, in terms of the overall positioning of African states in the international order, nothing new under the sun, even in this emerging markets century. African countries would be amiss if they did not investigate every avenue for improvement at a time when so many aspects of the international system seem to be in flux – its economics, politics and cultural relations, if not its fundamental units. Certainly more powerful developing states have taken advantage of these shifts, notably the BRICs. But does it make sense to expect that African agency will have a significant impact on shaping a reconfigured international order as it currently emerges or will the reconfiguration of global power merely see Africa trade old masters for new ones? Mohan and Power predict that even with the much-­heralded entry of China into African markets and politics, little changes in terms of Africa’s role in the international order: . . . China’s involvement will not fundamentally alter Africa’s place in the global division of labour. It simply adds a new and significant market without challenging the continent’s extraversion. History suggests that in some states this will entrench rentier states, concentrate ownership in a few hands, and deliver limited multipliers to marginalised Africans. (2008: 36) Given the West’s now increasingly precarious role as a driving and dominant force in the international system, international relations may revert to great power rivalries when vestiges of US-­centred dominance recede (see Ikenberry et al. 2009). Multilateralism in the context of international organisations will likely become less important than bilateral bargaining between major powers and those states in marginalised regions providing natural resources, cheap labour and expanding markets for goods.

South Africa in Africa and with the BRICS As Africa’s largest and most developed economy, South Africa has long been considered pivotal in driving African development and increasing Africa’s profile internationally. The end of apartheid and the ANC Government’s initial

154   S. Andreasson cachet worldwide meant that South Africa was able to punch above its weight diplomatically, thus enjoying a prominent, if not necessarily deserved, role in international politics (Alden and Le Pere 2009). South Africa’s success remains, however, an example of pursuing what Kagan (2003) describes as strategies of the weak. Following intense lobbying by the South African Government of the BRIC nations, the country was, in 2011, rather surprisingly admitted into this informal grouping of major emerging market powers, henceforth known as BRICS (Andreasson 2011: 1173). If one must identify a relatively strong state in Africa, it is South Africa.5 If any African country should be able to effectively exercise its agency in negotiations with powerful states and in international forums, it should be South Africa. In this sense, South Africa constitutes a hard test case: if not even Africa’s strongest states contain a sufficient degree of the capabilities and strengths which make for de facto sovereign states, then the hypothesis that African state weakness explains Africa’s continued marginalisation and, ipso facto, the weakness of African agency in international relations seems vindicated. Flemes (2007) argues that regional powers support international organisations as a way to enhance their influence vis-­à-vis great powers: South Africa’s success in influencing the processes and structures of the international system will depend largely on its ability to build a coalition with its peers, Brazil and India for instance. As the realist approach emphasises: a multipolar system can only be achieved by the emergence of cooperating regional unipolarities that balance the superpower. (2007: 52) The recognition of peers is also an important factor in determining any particular state’s regional power status, and South Africa has indeed been recognised as one: Peers like Brazil and India accept South Africa’s leadership role as Pretoria accepts theirs implicitly when these countries cooperate in multilateral institutions like IBSA, WTO (as G–3), NAM or the UN. When the US and European and Asian great powers negotiated trade issues with South Africa, e.g. at the WTO – conference in Cancun, they accepted it as an advocate of the developing world (especially of Africa). And the invitations to President Mbeki together with his Indian and Brazilian colleagues to the recent G–8 summits or to the World Economic Forum meetings in Davos, Switzerland, reflect substantial acceptance of South Africa’s leadership role by the most powerful players of the international system. (Flemes 2007: 40) Flemes (2009) indicates similar success for South Africa in pursuing its interests via the India–Brazil–South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA). Flemes’ analysis of South African agency stands in contrast to more cautious assessments. For

Elusive agency   155 Taylor (2009), the creation of IBSA in 2003 to enhance south–south cooperation, in particular economic cooperation between major emerging markets, is, in fact, a manifestation of ‘inherent frustration with the results of WTO negoti­ ations for key exporting states from the Global South . . .’ (Taylor 2009: 45). It is significant that Taylor’s (2009: 51–52) discussion of the increasing global presence of IBSA primarily concerns India and Brazil, while it is unclear where South Africa fits into these developments and, in any case, ‘bilateralism and agreements with the North seem paramount and trump so-­called South–South cooperation strategies’ (Taylor 2009: 53). Because the IBSA member states are competitors for export shares to developed markets, rather than ‘natural collabor­ ators for cooperation’, one can only surmise that, in this game, African states will be the ones who are least able to reap whatever benefits may materialise (2009: 53). In the final analysis, Taylor (2009: 55) argues that IBSA – as developing states in general – displays a rather naive view that the WTO represents a ‘fair and rules-­based global trading regime’, in which developing states on the margins of the international system can confront and challenge the world’s dominant powers and their interests. Even though Taylor is critical of state-­ centric perspectives on development and global economic affairs, his argument about IBSA fits with the argument put forth here concerning the ultimate importance of state strength and location in the international system for the effective exercise of agency and for the developmental prospects of any state. While South Africa may see some benefits of participation in IBSA, it is particularly India and Brazil who stand to benefit, on account of their many advantages over South Africa in terms of economic and other material capabilities. Criticisms of South Africa’s socio-­economic foundations at home and hitherto lauded diplomatic influence and moral standing internationally, including in Africa, suggests, furthermore, that the country’s regional power status may be difficult to sustain (Alden and Le Pere 2009; Andreasson 2011). ‘While many extra-­regional actors have welcomed Pretoria’s self-­assigned role as Africa’s pre-­eminent advocate, some fellow African states are not so sure about its true intentions’ (Flemes 2007: 40). Despite South Africa’s ‘near-­obsession with [exercising leadership in] Africa . . . the evidence that actual practice in the post-­ apartheid years has matched the rhetoric is sparse, at best’ (Blumenfeld 2010: 16–17), and there is a tendency among Western powers to ‘misread the empirical basis of South African power in Africa’ (Alden and Le Pere 2009: 149). The most serious challenge to Africa’s strongest state in this regard is the increasing threat to its domestic order, i.e. the Weberian ideal-­type sovereignty, on which all states must rely to effectively pursue their interests externally (Alden and Le Pere 2009: 161–164; Andreasson 2001: 1175–1178). This threat to South ­Africa’s empirical statehood is what Alden and Le Pere (2009: 167) refer to as the country’s ‘own horsemen of the apocalypse in the form of endemic poverty, crime and inequality’. The basis on which South Africa can claim status as a regional power is also outlined and questioned by de Kadt (2010: 29–30). South Africa risks failure

156   S. Andreasson across most essential priorities for meeting the challenges of this century. In terms of ensuring that economic growth is ‘not complicated by political factors’ (de Kadt 2010: 29), the costs of the Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) programme are becoming increasingly controversial (Southall 2008). South Africa’s need to invest more in human capital is complicated by a net out-­migration of skilled professionals, which creates an ill-­affordable brain drain that is not properly tackled by government policies (Wa Kabwe-­Segatti and Landau 2008). South Africa lags behind international competitors in ensuring that education promotes scientific and technological innovation (see Kruss et al. 2010). Improving state performance and delivery capabilities has encountered continual difficulties and setbacks, prompting increasingly violent and potentially destabilising so-­called ‘service delivery protests’ (Booysen 2007). Ensuring that elites hold to the ‘normative principles of the constitutional order’ (de Kadt 2010: 30) – i.e. that they safeguard democratic consolidation – is undermined by increasing corruption in government (Southall 2008). Africa’s strongest state faces very serious problems combining to pose a more important threat to its empirical statehood and, therefore, its position in the international system, than do similar challenges in other emerging markets. South Africa’s manifest difficulties and resultant hampering of its effective agency internationally when compared to the other BRICS illustrates the general rule that African states remain weak by international comparison. Indeed, it is partly the notable weakness of other African states which makes South Africa stand out as a regional power and as the one African state that could possibly be included in the category of major emerging markets. And if South Africa’s ­worsening internal challenges are damaging the country’s future standing and capability to exercise regional power, the South African case suggests further confirmation of the previously stated hypothesis: even Africa’s undeniably strongest state faces severe and possibly insurmountable pressures, thus hampering it significantly in international affairs. These difficulties are most obviously manifested in comparisons to, and in recent relations with, the BRICS to which South Africa has now officially been joined. If this is the case, we might, to paraphrase Jackson and Rosberg (1986), eventually come to view South Africa’s designation as a major emerging market in the same category as the other BRICS as a case of juridical, rather than empirical, BRICS status.

Conclusion Looking beyond present flux in the international system, we can, as expected (see Hobson 2001; Waltz 2001), perceive a degree of overall continuity. This is perhaps counter-­intuitive at a time of global economic turmoil, acute crisis of the Eurozone, Arab uprisings, growing concerns about declining US hegemony and the economic and possibly military rise of China. But just as Wallerstein’s (1974) Modern World-­System suggested little scope for movement up and down the system, with most of this movement reserved for those hard to categorise ‘semi-­ peripheral’ states (today’s emerging markets?), it is likely that the majority of

Elusive agency   157 states located on the periphery –home to the vast majority of those to whom Collier (2007) refers to as the ‘bottom billion’ – will remain peripheral. The great global economic convergence, such as it is under way today (see Scott 2001), will likely be a phenomenon primarily affecting the relative positions of the developed West vis-­à-vis major emerging markets where levels of overall economic and technological development, as well as military capabilities, will converge throughout the century. Such convergence will hardly improve the relative position of the weakest states in the system – the majority of which are in Africa. An international system developing along these lines does not preclude absolute gains for its weakest states. But there are few indications of substantial relative gains that could result in a more equal international order. It is hard to escape the sense that the window of opportunity for convergence between the most and least developed regions of the world, which opened up with decolonisation in the latter half of the twentieth century, is now being closed. Instead, a gulf too wide to bridge by processes of convergence along lines generally presumed by orthodox theories of economic development might prevent any meaningful catch-­up by the most marginalised states lagging behind even Gerschenkron’s (1962) ‘late late developers’. If this is the case, countries in Africa and elsewhere who, on account of weak state capabilities, are ill-­equipped to exercise agency by effectively competing and promoting their national interests might have to set their sights first on gradual improvements to the various capabilities that constitute empirical statehood. Only then might they examine possibilities for balancing more powerful states by building bilateral and multilateral alliances anchored first and foremost in the interests of the sovereign state, rather than in the ephemeral power of regional and international organisations. As long as sovereign states remain the key actors in international affairs, efforts to improve the prospects of marginalised states and peoples must begin at home.

Notes 1 For a broader and more inclusive conceptualisation of ‘African agency’ in international relations, see also Brown (2012). 2 I am grateful for David Williams, who prompted me to consider this possibility. 3 I am indebted to Aviezer Tucker for making this point. 4 Although international organisations do mediate states’ interests, they can be ineffectual, and it is usually powerful states who shape their actions in the first place – most obviously in instances where some states exercise a de jure or de facto veto on crucial matters (for respective realist and liberal accounts of this, see Waltz 2000 and Ikenberry et al. 2009). 5 Other African states, like Botswana and Rwanda, may also be considered relatively strong internally. But they are far too small in terms of population and economic size to have any significant influence in the international system, and African states of sufficient size in this respect, like Nigeria, are notoriously weak internally.

11 From weak state to savvy international player? Rwanda’s multi-­level strategy for maximising agency Danielle Beswick This chapter explores the Rwandan regime’s attempts to maximise its agency in relations with groups of actors at three inter-­related levels: the domestic, regional and international. It challenges the argument that aid-­dependent states are uniformly weak in their relationships with international actors, instead highlighting strategies of balancing and leverage employed by the regime to minimise threats and maximise opportunities on these three levels, allowing itself greater agency in responding to them. The chapter adopts Emirbayer and Mische’s sociological definition of agency as: [A] temporally embedded process of social engagement, informed by the past, (in its habitual aspect), but also oriented toward the future (as a capacity to imagine alternative possibilities) and toward the present (as a capacity to contextualize past habits and future projects with the contingencies of the moment). (1998: 963) This suggests a unitary quality to the agent and a temporal dimension. The unitary nature of actors may be difficult to apply to regimes, rather than leaders, but, as I will argue, there is a shared goal of regime security and survival, which, when regime actors perceive and prioritise the same threats, creates a unity of purpose that maximises their capacity to act without significant internal division. The emphasis on temporal context is also important in discussing African agency, as I argue that it is only when regimes recognise, maximise and utilise their leverage in relations with other actors within a specific historical and structural context that they can truly enhance their independence of action. The experience of genocide makes Rwanda’s search for agency unique. In no two states are threats identified and defined as such in precisely the same ways, by the same categories of actors and for the same purposes. Indeed, recognising these context-­specific processes and the interaction between ‘specific domestic and external contexts’ is vital if we are to understand how regimes seek to maximise agency in particular situations (Khadiagala and Lyons 2001: 1; Krause 1998: 133). However, despite recognising the importance of individual country contexts, I argue that the approach outlined here provides a useful framework for

Weak state to savvy international player?   159 analysing the agency-­seeking actions of other states in sub-­Saharan Africa. To do so, the chapter will draw on the work of scholars who emphasise regime security (Ayoob 1995; Clark 2001a), explore weak state strategies for maximising leverage vis-­à-vis strong states (Bobrow and Chan 1988; Bayart 2000) and highlight the importance of multi-­level balancing approaches (David 1991; Clapham 1996). The chapter argues that Rwanda’s search for agency is driven by two linked aims: first, the desire of the ruling regime to maintain power and, second, their determination that Rwanda will not experience a return to genocide, as occurred in 1994. This drive for agency and independence in responding to threats or opportunities is heavily influenced by the experience of the ruling Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF ) in 1994. In particular, it reflects a conviction that though the international community is a necessary partner in providing development aid and other forms of assistance, it cannot be relied upon to guarantee Rwanda’s continued peace and security. Thus, finding leverage and space for agency has become crucial to regime security and survival.

Regime security and survival in ‘weak states’ During the Cold War, the states of sub-­Saharan Africa were largely considered by scholars to be peripheral to international security. As Azar and Moon noted in relation to Third World states, security problems were defined by their links to system-­level dynamics. According to this view, they argued: ‘the Third World, is simply the backdrop for the competition of the superpowers and medium sized powers and is relegated to the status of clients who benefit or suffer commensurately with their protectors’ (1988: 4–5). This tendency by both powerful states and academic commentators to view developing states as weak ‘system-­ ineffectual states that can never, acting alone or in small groups, make a significant impact on the system’ (1988: 5) precluded much systematic analysis of the security threats that elites in such states identified and prioritised and the policy drivers which emanated from the domestic or sub-­regional, rather than international, level. However, a number of authors – many writing at the end of the Cold War and during the 1990s – sought to remedy this dearth of analysis of policy drivers in sub-­Saharan Africa. The most comprehensive of these combine an appreciation of the structural constraints and opportunities of the international system, with recognition of the importance of the varying levels of internal social cohesion and government legitimacy which these states enjoy. These analyses have tended to emphasise continuities in the overriding priorities of such states, more specifically, their ruling regimes from the Cold War to the 1990s and even the present day, particularly focusing on the twin concerns of the survival and security of the state and of the ruling regime (Clapham 1996; Ayoob 1995; Khadiagala and Lyons 2001). Though the concept of ‘regime security’ has been criticised as analytically unhelpful (Krause 1998: 129), it does reflect the deep degree of synergy in some sub-­Saharan states between the state structures or institutions used to

160   D. Beswick rule a legally defined territory and the group of people or ruling regime which commands those structures. Indeed, in some cases, a ruling regime will present itself as the only configuration able to maintain stability and the coherence of the state. This is particularly pronounced in states ruled by regimes that captured power as ‘liberation forces’, such as Ethiopia, Uganda and our case study (later in the chapter), Rwanda (Dorman 2006). Through neo-­patrimonial practises, the regime becomes inextricably bound up with the core institutions and power centres of the state. The unwillingness to allow a level playing field for political competition – evident in all the states mentioned above – reflects this contention that the fate of the state and that of the party or regime are indivisible. In such states, the twin concerns of state survival and regime security drive policymaking. To begin with state survival, as argued by Clapham (1996) and Jackson (1990), the states of sub-­Saharan Africa share a common feature – international recognition, imparting legal status in the international system and membership of key international organisations. These states enjoy juridical statehood, but often lack empirical statehood, including a monopoly on the use of force within their territory at minimum and ‘an organised power to protect human rights or provide socio-­economic welfare’, maximally (Jackson 1990: 21). Negotiating the tensions between de jure existence of equal states and the de facto reality of inequality has largely defined the policies pursued by African regimes since independence (see, for example, Clapham 1996; Bayart 2000). Key aspects of de facto statehood are unequal economic relations between developed and developing states and wide variations in state capacity, institutionalisation of government and socio-­political cohesion. State survival in sub-­Saharan Africa was supported during the Cold War by changing norms within the international community, precluding their re-­colonisation or conquest (Jackson 1990: 23–24). Assured of the basis of their sovereignty in legal statehood, and often supported militarily, financially and diplomatically by Cold War patrons, ruling elites identified internal challengers as the primary threat to their rule. Strategies for countering such challenges varied, including coercion and repression using formal and informal security forces on the one hand and programmes of social and economic development, periods of political liberalisation and attempts at nation-­ building on the other (see, for example, Clark on Zaire 2001a: 71; Ayoob 1995: 26–27). If, as argued by Ayoob, ‘the sense of insecurity from which these states suffer emanates largely from within their boundaries rather than from outside’ (1995: 7), this suggests that, in their search for security regimes, states would focus primarily on the domestic arena and ways to co-­opt, coerce or otherwise eliminate challenges to their rule. However, this would be too narrow a focus, particularly in the context of globalisation and a growing emphasis on regional security complexes (see Buzan 1991; Ayoob 1995: 56–59). Clark’s analysis, focusing specifically on central Africa, is perhaps more accurate in similarly identifying regime security as ‘the first priority of any government in the region’, but adding, crucially, that this drives ‘both foreign and domestic policy’ (2001a:

Weak state to savvy international player?   161 68). Within networked systems, ‘external threats quite often augment the problems of insecurity that exist within state boundaries’ (Ayoob 1984: 43; Clapham 1998). Therefore, regimes must still recognise ‘domestic’ threats as part of a broader network of potential and actual connections to the region and beyond, with external supporters able to provide assistance ranging from diplomatic support to military aid and safe havens from which to launch their challenge (see also Clapham 1996: 62–74). The above analyses suggest that, when examining agency-­seeking strategies, there is a strong rationale for focusing on how regimes privilege and prioritise particular threats that directly challenge the basis of their rule. In an environment where threats to regime security manifesting in the domestic or regional arena, such as political opposition movements or armed rebel groups, are closely linked to actors and processes in the international arena, such as external patrons or institutions and narratives of global governance, analyses of agency-­seeking actions must be similarly multi-­level in their approach. To understand how African regimes seek agency, there is also a clear need to recognise the limits placed on states by their relative weakness in the international system, but also to go beyond this narrow view to explore how narratives of weakness and strength are employed by regimes, in order to disrupt external support for challengers and to maintain their position.

‘Weak state’ strategies for maximising agency Despite the move away from a Cold War bipolar world order over the past two decades, African states still rely to a significant extent on the support and goodwill, or at least benign disinterest, of developed states. External patrons were highly important to regime survival during the Cold War, directly supporting client regimes or sponsoring movements that challenged them across sub-­ Saharan Africa (Clapham 1996: 134–159). In the post-­Cold War period, they continue to be a primary source of aid, whether financial, military or diplomatic, and present both threats and opportunities to African regimes. This is perhaps most pronounced in the case of states which rely heavily on donor aid and have a limited natural resource base, such as our case study, Rwanda, and also Uganda, until its recent discovery of oil reserves. Such states have courted donors to access aid necessary to finance recurrent budget expenditure, sometimes presenting themselves as models of neoliberal reform (see Harrison 2004; Khadiagala and Lyons 2001: 11). Following Ayoob’s analysis (1984: 46), the pursuit of external resources can be regarded as necessary, in order for African regimes to tackle the social and economic dimensions of ‘nation-­building’ – a task which aims to decrease the alienation between the rulers and the ruled in Africa and thereby moderate domestic threats to regime security. Such regimes, whether seeking to protect themselves in gated communities and with personal military forces or in pursuit of socio-­economic development for their populations, cannot achieve either without external aid. However, reliance on external powers presents a dilemma for African regimes seeking to maximise their agency. As Khadiagala and Lyons (2001: 7) argue in

162   D. Beswick their study focusing on foreign policymaking, such states must simultaneously seek to ‘manage threats to domestic security and insulate their decision-­making from untoward external manipulation’. During the Cold War, the reliance of regimes on external aid and support from the United States or the Soviet Union led nationalist movements to question the extent of their independence from colonial rule. In the contemporary environment, emphasis on local ownership of development, including aid modalities such as budget support, have rhetorically and incrementally supported greater African agency in aid relationships, although this is still subject to de facto conditionalities (Harrison 2004). Regimes must therefore balance the need to access resources to pursue policies that support regime security with the concessions required by external backers in return, particularly where such concessions may provide grounds for challenges to the legitimacy and perceived independence of the ruling regime. Maximising agency in these circumstances is challenging, to say the least, but, as will be discussed below, through the strategy of balancing and a keen awareness and util­ isation of particular forms of leverage, it is possible to expand the space for decision-­making and, in doing so, secure greater independence of action than might be presumed possible for ‘weak’ and dependent states. Steven David’s work explores the ways that developing states gain greater policy space or agency in dealing with threats to regime security by balancing threats and opportunities at different levels: domestic, regional and international. Regimes, he claims, will seek to divide those who could threaten them, primarily by ‘appeasing the international allies who may otherwise support their domestic opponents’ (1991: 235–236). His attempt to explain why regimes ally with particular external actors at particular times – omnibalancing – stems from the contention that the ‘most powerful determinant of Third World alignment behaviour is the rational calculation of Third World leaders as to which outside power is most likely to do what is necessary to keep them in power’ (1991: 235). He also argues that leaders in developing states will occasionally appease or align with what appear to be secondary threats, so as to allow them to focus efforts and resources on dealing with primary adversaries (David 1991: 235–237). These primary adversaries, reflecting our discussions above, typically emanate from the domestic arena. Updating David’s theory of omnibalancing for a post-­Cold War context, we must recognise that alignments are not only possible between international actors and domestic opponents, which use force to challenge a ruling regime (as seen, for example, in superpower support for armed rebel groups in Mozambique or Angola). Opposition political movements and parties have burgeoned in Africa since 1991 and will often appeal for external assistance in pursuing their challenge to existing regimes, expanding their support base or mounting political campaigns as part of a process of democratisation. The emphasis placed by many donor states on promoting multi-­party democracy, enhancing space for political expression and increased accountability of governments to their citizens in countries to which they provide aid has further accelerated this process. Despite donor-­sponsored democratisation posing a significant threat to ruling regimes in Africa during the 1990s and beyond, David’s central claim – regimes

Weak state to savvy international player?   163 seek to counter domestic challenges to their rule by seeking alignments with external powers – remains valid. This is supported by Bayart’s concept of ‘extraversion’ (2000), which suggests that, despite the pressure to democratise that often accompanies regime relationships with external actors, such links are sought and maintained because they continue to provide a crucial source of resources for regimes to pursue their own priorities and security. Regimes can actively encourage such relationships by showing a degree of commitment – rhetorical or practical – to the agendas of external actors and by demonstrating their value in achieving the goals of such actors in a given situation or region. This will be discussed further later in the chapter. Analysing this balancing of relationships at different levels as an agency-­ seeking strategy requires a two-­stage approach. First, it requires that we identify what the regime in question perceives to be the key threats to its security at different levels. Second, it requires us to identify potential perfect storms, where domestic challengers may ally with international actors, thus gaining diplomatic, military, financial or other forms of support to significantly challenge the ruling regime. However, these steps only tell us how regimes identify and prioritise threats. This is not, in itself, sufficient to explain the agency-­seeking strategies of regimes. The third element of the approach requires analysis of how regimes try to proactively influence the decisions of key external actors with the resources to turn a minor nuisance of a domestic challenge into a large scale pro-­democracy movement or armed rebellion. To maximise their agency and minimise threats to their rule, regimes must therefore have a keen appreciation of how and why external actors make decisions on whether to provide support to regimes or to their challengers. For regimes to influence these decisions, they must carefully appraise the features and characteristics of their state in relation to the policy agendas and concerns of external actors, identifying qualities and activities which may provide greater leverage in dealings with external actors. As will be shown, this may consist of positive qualities and contributions by regimes to initiatives that donors wish to see promoted, such as peacekeeping, but it may conversely require regimes to highlight their own areas of weakness and vulnerability. In other words, to maximise agency through a successful strategy of balancing requires that regimes are aware of, and seek to actively maximise, their own country-­specific forms of leverage in any given context. Sub-­Saharan African states have two broad types of leverage in their relationships with external actors. The first category can be categorised as ‘positive’ leverage strategies, through which a regime demonstrates its commitment to ideals or causes that are important to international actors. Harrison’s work on ‘governance states’ (2004) demonstrates an aspect of this, arguing that by successfully executing neoliberal reforms, states can provide donors with evidence that ‘reform works’. This gives donor states a strong interest in maintaining good relations with such regimes. Other regimes have sought positive leverage by presenting themselves as committed contributors to African peace and security, through peacekeeping on the continent or by presenting themselves as bulwarks

164   D. Beswick against violence and extremism in their own states (see Fisher in this volume). During the Cold War, fear of Soviet influence in Africa was a key factor in Western support to client regimes, but the end of the Cold War has arguably enhanced, rather than diminished, Africa’s strategic importance (see Commission for Africa 2005). David observed in 1991 that ‘were the Soviets to abandon their efforts to expand their influence throughout the world, the Third World would be left as the principle threat to international stability’ (1991: 254). As predicted, the developing world has, indeed, grown in importance for international security, in terms of energy security, but also as a site of intrastate conflict, failures of international aid to tackle human insecurity and the threat of transnational terrorism. Therefore, a fear of instability and insecurity if a particular regime collapses influences the policies and alignment decisions of external donor states. Through emphasising their vulnerability – a strategy that can be considered ‘negative leverage’ – African leaders can use this as a resource to prevent alliances between domestic and international actors against them. This may seem counter-­intuitive, but it reflects a degree of continuity with Cold War strategies, as reported by Clapham’s analysis of the US attempts to disentangle themselves from their relationship with the Haile-­Selassie regime in 1970s Ethiopia: [T]he very weakness of a client provided him with the ability to manipulate a patron. If the client was heavily dependent on the patron, then the patron might well also depend on the client, whose domestic and regional opponents were associated with rival patrons. (1996: 64) Clearly, whether positive or negative, as Bobrow and Chan argue, leverage is ‘inherently a function of both what a country has to offer to others and what others want for their own purposes’ (1988: 52). In this regard, leverage-­ seeking and maximising is an iterative process. They also assert that analyses of the leverage available to developing states often takes too narrow a view, failing to recognise the importance of links between different forms of leverage or of attempts to deny or disrupt the leverage of others (Bobrow and Chan 1988: 50). For example, as we will see in the case study, Rwanda, until mid-­ 2012, successfully deflected international sanctions for its operations in DR Congo, partly by emphasising its key role in peacekeeping in Darfur (Beswick 2010b). Maximising leverage requires regimes to carefully seek to shape and manage the perceptions that international actors have of them (see Fisher in this volume). Bobrow and Chan, however, despite emphasising the options for developing states to maximise their ‘marginal leverage’, including ‘resort to collective action, linkage politics and image-­shaping strategies’ (1988: 53), distinguish between two forms of leverage, both of which raise interesting questions for our debates on the limits of African agency in this collection. They argue that:

Weak state to savvy international player?   165 It is important to keep in mind the distinction between leverage in the form of bargaining power and that in the form of structural power. The former refers to specific advantages in influencing the outcome of a particular game or topic. The latter refers to general advantages in influencing the nature or the rules of the game to be played. Third World countries, individually or collectively, can have bargaining power in specific situations. They lack structural power. (Bobrow and Chan 1988: 51) Despite this lack of power to change structures, over the long-­term, regimes have demonstrated their ability to identify sources of leverage and, according to Bayart, to: ‘exploit, occasionally skilfully, the resources of a dependence which is, it cannot ever be sufficiently stressed, astutely fabricated as much as predetermined’ (1993: 25–26). This argument points to the potential for African regimes to frame their interactions with the rest of the world using the conceptions that others have of their weaknesses and dependencies, in order to pursue their own objectives. In summary, although African regimes may face constraints which diminish their policy options, some external-­systemic (for example, aid dependency) and others relating to processes within their states (for example, challengers pursuing democratic or non-­democratic means), some are able to use leverage and balancing to minimise threats and maximise opportunities at different levels, in order to maximise their agency. The rest of the chapter provides a case study of this approach in action in post-­genocide Rwanda. First, it will briefly set out broad trends in Rwanda’s policies at the national, regional and international level. It explains the impact of the genocide on Rwanda’s post-­genocide politics and explores the threats to, and opportunities for, the Rwandan regime, which emerge at each of the three levels. It ends with a summary of how threats emanating from different actors at these levels have the potential to align and threaten the regime’s security. The subsequent section draws on the approaches outlined above to show how the Rwandan regime has deliberately sought to appease some threats, in order to allow itself greater freedom and greater agency in dealing with others, which it judges to be a greater challenge to its security. Finally, the chapter concludes by reviewing the usefulness of these approaches in explaining how African states attempt to enhance their agency, in spite of their apparent ‘weakness’.

Forged in genocide: Rwanda’s domestic, regional and international policy The experience of the 1994 genocide is the primary influence on the contemporary domestic and foreign policy of Rwanda, significantly impacting the attitudes and decisions of its ruling regime. The genocide, which lasted for 100 days, was not ended by the UN force based in Rwanda, but by a rebel group, the RPF, made up largely of former Rwandan refugees who had returned to the

166   D. Beswick country in 1991, thus sparking a civil war. This group, led by Paul Kagame, were primarily Rwandan Tutsi refugees – a minority ethnic population who were exiled after the move to majority Hutu rule, following the departure of the Belgian colonial administrators in 1962. The RPF invasion force proved ten­ acious, militarily capable and resilient. In 1993, the Hutu-­led Rwandan Government agreed to allow them to operate as a political party in Rwanda, with the question of the return of thousands of Tutsi refugees in exile still to be resolved. However, before this agreement could be implemented, the Hutu President, Juvenal Habyarimana, was killed when his plane was shot down over Rwanda. Hutu hardliners in his administration subsequently rolled out a programme of mass extermination to kill all Tutsi in Rwanda. This genocide, which led to the deaths of over 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu who supported power sharing or tried to save Tutsi, ended in July 1994 when the RPF took control of the capital Kigali (for a detailed account of the genocide, see Prunier 2002). Since 1994, the RPF have dominated Rwandan politics. Some political parties and leaders were quickly arrested or barred from politics, due to their actions or association with the forces involved in the genocide. From 1994 to 2003, a national unity government ruled, led by a Hutu RPF member, Bizimungu, with Kagame as vice-­president. Kagame, who many argue was more powerful in government than Bizimungu (despite his lesser title), took over as president in 2000 when Bizimungu resigned (Reyntjens 2004). Bizimungu’s later proclamations, that the regime had become too intolerant of dissent and that this could lead to a backlash from Hutu, led to his arrest in 2001 and imprisonment until 2007 on charges of threatening state security (Reyntjens 2004). The first post-­genocide parliamentary elections in 2003 saw an RPF-­led coalition take almost 75 per cent of votes; in a presidential election that year, Kagame won over 95 per cent of votes. In subsequent parliamentary elections in 2008, the RPF-­led group increased its share of the vote to almost 80 per cent, and, in recent 2010 presidential elections, Kagame won over 93 per cent of votes (Commonwealth Secretariat 2010). The support shown for Kagame in presidential elections is, therefore, extremely high, and the dominance of the RPF-­led coalition of parties is clear from the numbers. There is not space in this chapter to discuss all the factors which explain the RPF dominance of Rwandan politics. However, to understand the range of threats to the RPF-­led regime, which shape the policies it pursues to maximise agency in dealing with challenges to regime security, it is necessary to note some key features of Rwandan politics and RPF rule. Domestic Since coming to power, the dominant narratives of the RPF have been ‘never again’, in reference to the possible return of genocide, and the need for ‘national unity’ underpinned by ‘Rwandanness’ to ensure peace, security and development (Hintjens 2008). These narratives are dominant at the national level, but also feature in Rwandan foreign policy, permeating discussions with other African states and donors (Hayman 2008). The attempt to build national identity has

Weak state to savvy international player?   167 been accompanied by a parallel determination to delegitimise ethnicity as a form of identity, outlawing discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity, as well as religion, gender and other identity markers (Hintjens 2008; Eltringham and van Hoyweghen 2000). Since 2000, the government has also passed legislation against ‘genocide ideology’, in order to prevent revisionism, trivialisation or denial of genocide. Critics, however, have labelled genocide ideology a nebulous term, which has been used to discredit opponents of the RPF and those who have, for example, highlighted the need for RPF fighters who killed Hutu during the genocide to be brought to justice (Frontline 2005). There is little tolerance of dissent, and the coalition system means that there is little political opposition or competition. The dominance of the RPF is therefore achieved by a combination of legislation, which circumscribes acceptable political behaviour, and shadow methods (Beswick 2010a). The latter are, by their nature, hard to directly attribute to government agents, but the government has often been implicated in the disappearance and attempted or actual assassination of opponents and critics of its policies (Reyntjens 2011a). At the national level, it seems that though there is much to commend in Rwanda’s post-­genocide recovery – stability, relative security and considerable development achievements – there is also only one acceptable political view – that which supports the RPF (Human Rights Watch 2011; Christian Aid 2004). This is underpinned by the moral authority that the RPF gained by ending the genocide and their contention that the same measures which work to narrow politics and keep them in power are necessary to prevent a return to genocide (Reyntjens 2011a). Regional The sub-­Saharan African region, particularly East/Central Africa, has also been a key stage for the Rwandan regime. Notwithstanding strong historical ties to Uganda, the DR Congo is the key regional player which the Rwandan regime must take into account when formulating foreign policy. From 1996 to 2003, Rwanda twice intervened in Zaire/DR Congo to force those who fled during the genocide back to Rwanda, including Hutu refugees and those who carried out the genocide (known in Kinyarwanda as ‘interahamwe’). The initial invasion in 1996, in concert with Uganda, led to the ousting of Congolese President Mobutu and his replacement by Laurent Kabila, whose son, Joseph, continues to rule in 2012. Born of a refugee movement in exile and keenly aware of the threat that such groups can pose (Clapham 1998), Rwanda’s repeated interventions in DR Congo show that the RPF has no intention of ignoring the rebel force on its border. These interventions have, however, also widely been seen as convenient cover for the exploitation of DR Congo mineral wealth, with Rwanda and Uganda, amongst others, profiting from the export of large quantities of coltan, gold and diamonds, despite lacking significant reserves of these resources in their own territory (Olsson and Congdon 2004). Since the official withdrawal of Rwandan troops in 2003, relations with DR Congo have been rocky, with

168   D. Beswick Rwanda accusing the Congolese Government of not doing enough to track down rebels who threaten the Rwandan regime and Rwanda accused of backing insurgent groups who operate in Eastern DR Congo. A 2010 leaked UN report (UNOHCHR 2010) goes further than alleging RPF support for rebels, accusing RPF troops of committing genocide against Hutu in DR Congo during the post-­ genocide interventions. It is clear, even from this brief outline, that there are significant threats to the security of the regime, which emanate from the region. At the same time, the region, and sub-­Saharan Africa more widely, have proved arenas in which the Rwandan regime is keen to build its reputation and increase its power. Rwanda has been instrumental in the resurrection and promotion of a revitalised East African Community. The current president of the African Development Bank is Rwandan, and a Rwandan soldier is the force commander of the hybrid African–Union United Nations Assistance Mission in Darfur, Sudan (UNAMID). Such examples of regional prestige are frequently cited by the regime as proof of the growing role of Rwanda on the African political, economic and military stage. The involvement in UNAMID is particularly feted, with Rwanda as the second largest contributor to the force and now consistently in the top ten country providers of peacekeeping troops to UN missions worldwide (Beswick 2010b). Allegations that genocide has been committed by Sudanese state-­sponsored forces in Darfur have further raised this aspect of Rwanda’s foreign policy in the domestic and international sphere, highlighting the credentials and moral authority of the RPF in fighting genocide at home and abroad. International Immediately following the genocide, the RPF made it clear that they would seek to cultivate closer relationships with Anglophone donors and European donors, but relations with historical partners, France and Belgium, were tense. This reflected the role that France played in providing military support for the pre-­ genocide government and, in the case of Belgium, the divisive policies pursued during the colonial period, which later made the swift genocide possible (Melvern 2004; Prunier 2002). Since 1994, Rwanda’s relationships with the US and UK have remained close, and the EU and Scandinavian donors have also provided a significant proportion of Rwanda’s aid portfolio (Hayman 2008). The country’s achievements in governance reform and development also led some of Rwanda’s major donors, including the UK, to move to budgetary support – a less tied form of aid, which signals trust in the RPF and confidence in its development plans (Beswick 2011a). Immediately following the genocide, donors were almost uniform in their public support for Rwanda and praising of the regime’s achievements in the following years, but, over time, this optimistic assessment became tempered by concern at Rwanda’s military involvement in DR Congo and increased pressure on the RPF to hold elections and end the transition period. The Rwandan regime has sought to portray itself, and, by some donors, has been somewhat accepted as, a model for post-­conflict reconstruction.

Weak state to savvy international player?   169 It has won a reputation as a development-­minded determined government, which possesses a strong military and a stable, if tightly managed, political system. It is regarded as a strong partner in African security, evidenced by its contribution to UNAMID, and also as a country which is business-­friendly and welcomes foreign investment. From this brief overview of Rwanda’s domestic, regional and international politics, it is clear that there are potential threats to regime security that emanate from each of the three levels and could overlap. Both international donors and regional powers are concerned at Rwanda’s role in insecurity in DR Congo. At the same time, domestic opponents of the Government and some international donors are also concerned by the lack of space for political debate in Rwanda and the fate of opposition activists and politicians, even in exile. The analyses discussed earlier would suggest that the Rwandan regime’s main interest lies in securing itself and its own power primarily from internal threat. The second of these potential alignments – between domestic opponents and international donors – would therefore seem the most important for Rwanda to avoid. However, the Rwandan case also demonstrates the importance of regional dynamics in contemporary policymaking in Africa. As the detailed example below will show, reducing the possibility of a perfect storm of alignment between domestic and international pressure in this case required Rwanda to seek alignment not directly with the greater power – international donor(s) – but instead with a regional actor, the DR Congo. It is through careful balancing and re-­orienting of its regional stance that Rwanda is able to secure greater agency in its dealings with donors, in order to more robustly defend against challenges at home. This is clearly demonstrated in the case of Rwanda’s surprise alignment with the DRC in early 2009.

Balancing and leverage in Rwanda’s pursuit of agency and regime security In early 2009, Rwanda made the surprising decision to align with the DR Congo on two core regional security issues affecting both states: the presence of Hutu genocidal militia in the DR Congo threatening Rwanda and the presence of Tutsi militia in DR Congo threatening the national government. To understand how this alignment allows Rwanda greater agency in dealing with challengers at home, it is necessary to briefly outline the domestic political situation in Rwanda during this period in the run-­up to the 2010 presidential elections. These elections – the second presidential elections since the 1994 genocide – were won by Kagame with over 93 per cent of the vote. Despite this seemingly overwhelming uniformity of political preference, the elections were not without incident. In the months and weeks prior to polling, the media, Rwandan and international human rights observers reported that opposition candidates and their supporters faced intimidation, harassment and even physical assault. Critical local newspapers were banned, and the most high profile candidate planning to contest the presidency, Victoire Ingabire, was arrested and barred from doing

170   D. Beswick so (BBC 2010a). The vice chairman of another opposition party, the Democratic Green Party, was found beheaded in July (BBC 2010b). Outside Rwanda, furore erupted when a dissident Rwandan general was shot in South Africa in an attack that South African security forces attributed to ‘foreign security operatives’ (BBC 2010c). By election day, just four candidates remained: Kagame and three who represented parties from the RPF-­led coalition in Parliament. In short, there was limited opposition to Kagame’s campaign. Despite significant press coverage of these events, international criticism of Kagame and his party was muted. This may reflect a number of factors, including the promotion of Rwanda as something of a model for post-­conflict reconstruction and its heavy involvement in peacekeeping in Darfur. However, I argue that it also reflects the success of the Rwandan Government in balancing threats and opportunities at multiple levels of policy, maximising space for agency domestically, so as to preserve its position by splitting the threats which could coalesce into alignment against it. Criticism of Rwanda’s lack of political space for opposition is not new; this began to emerge in 1995 with the departure of Hutu minister Seth Sendashonga from the Unity Government (he was later killed in 1998 in Nairobi after forming an opposition party, see Reyntjens 2004). However, at election time, when the media spotlight is on Rwanda, critics have perhaps greater power to reach a larger audience and to attempt to influence those reporting on Rwanda and those international actors supporting the RPF-­led regime. It is clear from both the available analyses cited in this chapter and my interviews with donors in Rwanda in 2005, 2006 and 2012 that the primary concerns of the international community with regards to Rwanda fall into two areas. The first is the RPF ’s intolerance of opposition to its rule and policies and the second is Rwanda’s involvement in the series of destabilising conflicts up to, and beyond, its official withdrawal from Congolese territory in 2003. To understand how the RPF has created space to act with greater agency in the former, it is necessary to better understand the latter. The conclusion of a series of peace agreements between the main protagon­ ists, a substantial UN peacekeeping presence and a programme to incorporate armed factions into the new Congolese Armed Forces have all failed to stabilise the Great Lakes region. Despite official withdrawal from the DR Congo in 2003, Rwanda’s links with mineral extraction operations on Congolese territory continued (Beswick 2009). This was partly achieved by working with proxy forces, who claimed to be fighting on behalf of Tutsi in DR Congo, who were being threatened and attacked by a Rwandan Hutu militia group – the Democratic Forces for the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR). One such Tutsi militia group, the CNDP (National Congress for the Defence of the People), led by Laurent Nkunda, broke away from the Congolese Army after nominal integration and, in 2008, threatened to take the city of Goma and mount a campaign to depose of the Congolese President. Around the same time, allegations surfaced in a leaked UN document of links between Nkunda and the RPF in Rwanda, namely that Nkunda protected Rwanda’s investments in DR Congo in return for financial and other support and the freedom to recruit fighters in Rwanda (BBC 2008). The

Weak state to savvy international player?   171 ineffectiveness of the UN force in Eastern DR Congo was increasingly apparent, and reports continued to surface of human rights abuses and large-­scale sexual violence committed by many groups, including Nkunda’s CNDP and the new Congolese Armed Forces. By late 2008, this combination of events meant that Rwanda was facing threats on all three levels. Domestically, the regime faced renewed pressure from civil society to allow more open political debate. This pressure reflected disappointment with the level of competition in parliamentary elections and a critical EU Election Observer report released in September (EU 2008), but those raising criticism also used this opportunity to push for greater openness in the run-­up to the 2010 presidential elections. Regionally, the direct threat from Nkunda meant that the Congolese Government could no longer afford to ignore his activities or the reports of links between Nkunda and Rwanda and became increasingly belligerent in their rhetoric towards Kigali (Beswick 2009). Meanwhile, the international community, mindful of the catastrophic consequences of previous interventions by Rwanda, feared that the gains made in DR Congo since 2003 would be lost. Having supervised the first parliamentary and presidential elections for over 40 years in 2006, international pressure on Rwanda to mend relations with DR Congo was considerable. When the Nkunda crisis escalated, DR Congo officials accused Rwanda of backing the insurgency, in order to create a buffer between the two countries (International Crisis Group 2010: 2). Its criticisms and accusation were, however, concentrated on Rwanda’s foreign policy and its actions towards DR Congo, specifically. In contrast, when bilateral donors pressured Rwanda to withdraw support for Nkunda, this issue was linked both implicitly and explicitly with Rwanda’s domestic intolerance of criticism (Reyntjens 2011b). The image of Rwanda as a country which relied heavily on donor support and funds, but operated with little or no regard for the sensitivities and wishes of its supporters in either domestic or foreign policy, steadily grew. In January 2009, to almost universal surprise, Rwanda announced that Nkunda had been arrested on Rwandan soil following a joint operation with the Congolese Government (International Crisis Group 2010). This cooperation and alignment was unprecedented and was followed by the further announcement of time-­limited joint operations between Rwandan and Congolese forces to root out interahamwe in Eastern DR Congo. This could be viewed as an attempt by the Rwandan regime to tackle a threat emanating from the regional level – the interahamwe and, especially, the FDLR. However, considering Rwanda’s military strength, as demonstrated in peacekeeping and in previous interventions in DR Congo, it seems highly unlikely that this group could pose an acute challenge to the regime’s security (United States Department of State 2012). Instead, the decision to arrest Nkunda and work with DR Congo on regional security can be viewed as an attempt to prevent further alignment of threats against the Rwandan regime on other levels. The EU election report (EU 2008), along with many other reports of violence and intimidation against critics of the RPF around the parliamentary elections, raised Rwanda’s profile in a negative way. International criticism over Rwanda’s

172   D. Beswick involvement in DR Congo could have combined with concerns over its domestic policy, effectively encouraging and, through international media and persistent civil society lobbying, pressuring donors to be more critical in their dealings with Rwanda. Of course, donors – even like-­minded donors – do not always act in a uniform way. The Netherlands and Sweden suspended aid to Rwanda during the Nkunda crisis (Reuters 2008), whereas the UK and US expressed concern, but fell short of outright censure and using their economic and other forms of potential leverage to pressure Kagame’s regime (Human Rights Watch 2011). By taking the foreign policy that most animated the international community out of the equation through making a deal with the Congolese authorities and arresting Nkunda (see Zorbas 2011), Rwanda was able to limit the scope for its domestic challengers to align with international donors – the only actors with potential leverage to pressure Rwanda for changes in its domestic policies. By reducing Rwanda’s association with ongoing instability and human rights abuses in its neighbour, the regime was left only to defend itself against charges of lacking tolerance on dissent, something that it has done successfully since 1995 by referring to the ‘special circumstances’ of a post-­genocide state (Hayman 2008). This leads to reluctance on the part of the international community to press for greater opening of political space, due to their failure to prevent or halt genocide in 1994, the perceived potential for regional instability without a strong regime in Kigali and the need to support ‘developmental’ regimes (Booth and Golooba Mutebi 2012), all of which can serve as proof that donor-­favoured policy prescriptions and reforms can be ‘successful’, given the right conditions and enlightened leadership (Harrison 2004; Browne 2006). Using an iterative multi-­level approach to analysing the search for agency therefore allows us to see policy alignment decisions taken with regards to regional relations – in this case, with the Congolese Government – as a way of preventing alignment between international actors and domestic threats to the regime. This echoes David’s analysis (1991) in one sense – that such balancing is about dealing with threats at one level in a way that provides greater policy space for a regime to deal with greater (subjectively defined) challenges to its own security at other levels. However, it also challenges aspects of the analyses outlined earlier, which are rooted in Cold War context. The Rwandan example suggests that aligning with the greater power embodied by superpowers or international donors may not always be the right strategy, indicating that regional dynamics must also be taken into account. Then again, in this case, the regional dynamics – Rwanda’s relations with DR Congo – are not purely regional in nature; they are key to the decision-­making of external actors, effectively reinforcing the point that these levels are not easily divisible for the purpose of analysis. In mid-­2012,1 the UK and US – previously steadfast supporters of Rwanda – suspended aid to the country following allegations of Rwandan backing for the M23 Rebel Movement led by former Congolese Army General and second in command to Laurent Nkunda, Bosco Ntaganda (Economist 2012). The decision to suspend aid may seem surprising, given the leverage which Rwanda has

Weak state to savvy international player?   173 sought to build up in its dealings with donors in recent years, as outlined. However, this shift in donor policy, even if short-­term, does support the assertion that, for donors, the stability of DR Congo is of vital importance. The limited domestic opposition to the RPF regime, secured over the long-­term by RPF strategies to limit political space and in the short-­term by comprehensive victory in 2010 elections, also means that the regime currently has little fear of a perfect storm of domestic–international alignment – a very different situation to the 2009 to 2010 period of the Nkunda crisis, with looming elections to be contested. This may mean the regime considered itself less vulnerable than at any time since 1994 and consequently in a better position to pursue its interests in DR Congo, regardless of international criticism. Though it remains to be seen how the Rwandan regime will respond to donor concerns, particularly whether renewed operations with the DR Congo military might again deflect international criticism and lead to renewed aid and restored relations, we can expect to see Rwanda continuing the strategy set out above: driven by its perception of key threats to regime security and the potential for alignments between these threats and shaped by a keen awareness of the sources of positive and negative leverage that it can bring to bear in its relationships with external actors.

Conclusion This paper has argued that a regime security approach is useful as it allows for a focus on domestic factors when exploring policies at other levels, including foreign aid and regional security policies, suggesting that the interests of regimes are more important than those of the notionally unitary state that they ‘represent’. By acknowledging this, we can better understand how nominally weak African regimes, seemingly lacking in agency, identify and balance threats at different levels, in order to prevent a perfect storm of alignment between domestic threats and international actors with the power and leverage to pressurise regimes into policy changes. This displays an extremely savvy understanding of the policy calculations of both regional neighbours and international actors, presenting a forceful challenge to depictions of African states as weak and passive ‘victims’ of more powerful states and historically enshrined, highly unequal international structures. In the case of Rwanda, as with many states in sub-­Saharan Africa, the chapter has demonstrated that these notionally different levels are extremely intertwined, with the regime using resources gained through relationships at one level to tackle threats at others. One could argue that Rwanda is a unique case – the history of genocide and moral authority of the ruling party are not replicated in exactly the same way elsewhere. However, there are other strong ruling parties in the region which grew from rebel movements and make similar claims of being the only bulwark against conflict or instability, such as Uganda or Ethiopia. There may also be broader applicability in states labelled ‘donor darlings’ and those which tend to avoid international censure for their domestic policies, in part due to leverage gained through activities such as involvement in peacekeeping (see Fisher’s contribution on Uganda’s role in Somalia in this volume).

174   D. Beswick This would suggest that agency is maximised where alignment decisions chime with narratives that appeal to powerful states in the international system, such as the post-­2001 War on Terror or ‘African solutions to African problems’. Such conclusions reflect Bobrow and Chan’s assertion that African states seek to maximise their bargaining power due to an inability to gain structural power, in effect raising a future research question that goes beyond this paper: what might a contemporary African influence on these structures or a strategy of agency which transcends, rather than subverting and manipulating, them look like? The analysis of Rwanda suggests that African states remain constrained by their position in an unequal state-­based system, but as some of the papers in this collection suggest, analysing agency at the level of the sub-­state, transnational and individual (everyday) may yet provide a basis for better theorising dynamic and multi-­level approaches to agency in international relations.

Note 1 The time of writing, August 2012.

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Index

Page numbers in italics denote tables. Abuja plan for regional integration 60 activism: and consensus decision-making 41–2; context of 20–4; and institutional Darwinism 45–6 affinities 75–6 Africa Group: activism 20–4; internal rift 27; submissions to DDA 38–9; UN reform 24–7 Africa, reasons for studying 3–4 African, Caribbean, and Pacific Group of States (ACP), EU–ACP relations 57–62 African Common Position on External Debt 22–3 African communities, United Kingdom 66 African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) (US) 54–5 African National Union Patriotic Front (ZANU PF ) (Zimbabwe) 70 African Union (AU) 6; activism 20–4; Addis Ababa summit 29; common positions 22–3; Follow-up Mechanism on the Reform of the United Nations 27; lack of effectiveness 152; limited role of 31; working group on climate change 28–9 agency: arenas 4–6; conceptual and theoretical debates 98–100; defining 34, 144, 158; determinants of 7–11; different senses of 4; extent 7; overview 2–4; political effects 10; purpose of 10; understanding 52–3 agency-seeking strategies 163 agriculture, Rwanda 91 aid relationships 5–6, 9, 54, 81; aid dependency 161–2; Asian approach 90; conditionality 99; corporate social responsibility (CSR) 116; dependence

146; donor agendas 83; and Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) 61–2; and global financial crisis 74–5; and policy constraint 97; Rwanda 168, 172–3; Uganda 103; United Kingdom 72–3; see also development assistance; Rwanda Alden, C. 155 alliances 5 AMISOM 104–5, 106, 108 Angola, bilateral relationships 76 Annan, Kofi 25 Arab Spring 75 arap Moi, Daniel 100 Arkhurst, F. 21 asymmetry, international relations 151–2 autonomy 9, 59 Ayoob, M. 160, 161 Azar, E. E. 159 balancing 162–3; Rwanda 169–73 BASIC initiative 30 Bayart, J.-F. 99, 138, 163 Bellingham, Henry 76 Besigye, Kizza 111 Bieler, A. 52 bilateral relationships 5–6, 9; EU–Africa trade relations 55–63; shift towards 50–1; see also European Union (EU) bilateral trade agreements 45, 51 Bizimungu, Pasteur 166 Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) (South Africa) 156 Blair government, Africa policy 67–72 Blair, Tony 68, 70–1, 77 Blumenfeld, J. 155 Bobrow, D. 164–5

198   Index book: outline 11–15; themes and questions 1–3 bottom billion 157 Bouteflika, Abdelaziz 70 brain drain 156 Brandt Commission Report 71 BRICS nations, and South Africa 153–6 Brown, Gordon 72 Burundi 105, 109 Bush, George W. 108 business, and social development 114 Buzan, B. 98 capabilities, of states 140 capacity building 42–5, 53 Caribbean Forum (CARIFORUM) 51 Carr, E. H. 131 celebrity-led campaigns 121–2 Chabal, P. 150 champions 32 Chan, S. 164–5 China: aid to Rwanda 84, 87, 89–95; corporate social responsibility (CSR) 115; international role 8, 63; relations with Africa 151, 153 Chomsky, N. 20, 21 Chuhan-Pole, P. 49 City of London, role and influence 66 civil society campaign groups 66 civil society, Rwanda 171–2 Clapham, C. 161, 164 Clark, J. 160 climate change negotiations 5; common positions 28–30; external interests 10 Coalition of the Willing 109 coalitions, coordination with 44 codes of conduct 118 Cold War 20, 159, 161, 162, 164 collective action 139–40 collective coordination 43 collective identity 136–7 Collier, P. 157 colonial rule: legacy of 137; Rwanda 168; see also imperialism Commission for Africa 71–2, 121 common interests 23 common positions 22–3; climate change negotiations 28–30; practicalities 31–2; summary and conclusions 33; UN reform 24–7 communication, image management 100, 108–9 conceptual and theoretical debates 98–100 concessions, obtaining 31

conditionality 99, 162 conflict resolution 5 conflict zones, corporate social responsibility (CSR) 122 consensus decision-making 40, 41–2, 46–7 Conservative Party (UK) 73 constructivism 35 context-specific processes 158 continental sovereignty 152 continuity assumption 145 Copenhagen Accord 30 Cornelissen, S. 50, 153 corporate social responsibility (CSR): in Africa 120–6; celebrity-led campaigns 121–2; codification 118; context and overview 114–17; defining 117; and development process 120; diffusion of ideas and practices 115–16; dynamics of 123; emancipatory and normative potentials 123–4; global governance 124; and global political economy 115; and human rights 118, 125; image management 121; legal instruments 124–6; as political 123; political dimensions 122; problems and challenges 119; public-private sectors 122; rights-based vs. incentive-based 120; rise and expansion 117–20; south– south cooperation 125; summary and conclusions 126 corruption, South Africa 156 Côte d’Ivoire, representatives of 135 Cotonou Agreement 57 Cotton Initiative 43, 54 cotton negotiations 40–1, 43 Cox, R. W. 52 crisis resolution, Uganda 106 Crying Game strategy 43 Dahl, R. 99 Daloz, J.-P. 150 David, S. 162–3, 164, 172 Davidson, B. 138, 149 De Kadt, R. 155–6 de Mesquita, B. 131 decentralisation 141 deliberative capacity 40 Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC): role of Uganda 10–11; and Rwanda 167–8, 169, 170–3 democratisation 140–1, 162–3; UN reform 26 Department for International Development (DFID) (UK) 67, 72, 73–4

Index   199 dependency, and agency 85–9 dependency theory 49 Derbez Text 38 Devarajan, S. 49 developing countries, assertiveness 5 developing country coalitions, coordination with 44 development, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) 120 development assistance 55; see also aid relationships Development Assistance Committee (DAC) 83, 87–8 development partners 87–8, 94–5 diplomacy 9; emergent role 22; radicalism 21; United Kingdom 72–3 discourse: as resistance 40; as tool 35–6 discourses, of development 40–1 Doha Development Agenda (DDA) 34; capacity building 42–5; consensus decision-making 41–2; deadlock 36–9, 50, 53, 63; Derbez Text 38; developing country coalitions 44; disappointment in 37–8; north-south contestation 45; purpose 36, 37; summary and conclusions 46–7; US demands 37 doing good 66–7 domestic policy, ownership of 99–100 domestic security, Rwanda 166–7 donor darlings 173 dynamic agency 40–1 East African Community 167–8 Economic Community of West African States Monitoring Group (ECOMOG) 105 Economic Development and Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (EDPRSP) (Rwanda) 86 economic growth 49–50 Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) 7, 45, 51; and agency 59–60; aid relationships 61–2; historical context 57; ‘Most-Favoured Nation’ clause 60; negotiations 57–9, 58, 61–2, 63; resistance to 51–2; sub-regional 60; WTO-plus 59; see also European Union (EU) education, Rwanda 91–2 elites 129, 138 emerging markets 150–3 emerging powers 50, 55, 63, 64; as aid donors 81, 84; corporate social responsibility (CSR) 115

Emirbayer, M. 158 Eritrea 77 ethical investment 121 ethical responsibility 121 ethnicity, as identity 166–7 European Development Fund (EDF) 61 European Union (EU): African presence 44; context and overview 49; cooperation and sovereignty 152; Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) 7; EU–Africa trade relations 55–63; summary and conclusions 63–4; supra-national governance 147–8; see also Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs) Everything But Arms (EBA) initiative 62 exercise of power 99 external agents 141 external patrons 161–2, 163, 173–4 external relations, coordination 32 Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative 114 extraversion 163 Ezulwini Consensus 25, 27 factional competition 146 fair trade 114 Flemes, D. 154–5 Flint, A. 62 focal point system 43, 46 Follow-up Mechanism on the Reform of the United Nations 27 Foreign and Commonwealth Office (UK) 67, 72, 73–4 foreign policy analysis tradition 131 Forum on China–Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) 90, 115 Fraser, A. 99 free trade agreements, bilateral and regional 45 Gallagher, J. 66 GATT, tariff levels 55 General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) 39 Generalised System of Preference (GSP) 51–2, 62–3 generic medicines 54, 55 genetically modified organisms (GMOs), common position 22 Geneva: increased African presence 43–4; support organisations 42–3 Genoa Summit 70 genocide ideology 167

200   Index genocide, Rwanda 86 geolinguistic regions 31 geopolitics: changes 8–9; competing interests 23; intra-continental divisions 31 Ghana, Poverty Reduction Strategy 138 Gilpin, R. 131 global agency 4–5 global corporate citizenship 118 global economic convergence 157 global economy, Africa's changing role 49 Global Europe strategy 55 global financial crisis 74–5 global governance, corporate social responsibility (CSR) 124 global power, asymmetry 20 Global Reporting Initiative 114 global trade governance: African influence 39; aim of study 36; bilateral and regional alternatives 45; context and overview 34–6; data sources 36; and institutional Darwinism 45–6; legitimacy 41; role of Africa 39–45; summary and conclusions 46–7; see also European Union (EU) global war on terror (GWOT), Uganda 106, 107, 109, 110 globalisation, and international strength 19–20 governance 77 governance states 163 Green Room process 41–2 Grosfoguel, R. 19, 21 Habyarimana, Juvenal 166 Hain, Peter 68–9 Harare position 25 Harrison, G. 163 Hay, C. 52 Hayman, R. 89 health, Rwanda 92 heavily indebted poor country (HIPC) debt relief 140 Herbst, J. I. 146–7, 148–9 Heron, T. 51 Hill, C. 98 HIV/AIDS, generic anti-retrovirals 54, 55 Hobbes, J. 134 Hobson, J. M. 145 human rights 77; corporate social responsibility (CSR) 118, 125; transnational corporations (TNCs) 117 Huntington, S. 20

identities 75–6; collective 136; levels of 31; national 136, 137, 138–9, 166–7 image management 6; communication 100, 108–9; corporate social responsibility (CSR) 121; as strategy for agency 97; see also Uganda imperialism: legacy of 20, 65–6, 67, 69; see also colonial rule In Larger Freedom: Towards Development, Security and Human Rights For All 25 India: aid to Rwanda 84; world role 150 India–Brazil–South Africa Dialogue Forum (IBSA) 154–5 individuals, as representing sovereign/ collective 134 infrastructure, Rwanda 92–3 Ingabire, Victor 169–70 institutional Darwinism 45–6 intellectual property see Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) accord Intergovernmental Authority of Development (IGAD) 104 internal strength 9 international agency 4–5 international negotiations: context and overview 19; context of activism 20–4; see also common positions international news media 66 international relations: Africa as peripheral 151–2, 159; asymmetry 151–2; changing perspectives 1; context and overview 143; emerging markets 150–3; peer recognition 154; South Africa 153–6; state agency in 143–5; summary and conclusions 156; see also state agency International Relations (IR): approaches to state agency 131–2, 141–2; possibilities of state agency 132–5 international security 164; Rwanda 168–9 intra-continental divisions 31 investor–recipient relationships 115 Ismail, Razali 24 Jackson, R. H. 146, 160 Jessop, B. 134 Kagame, Paul 138, 166, 169–70 Kagan, R. 148, 154 Kamidza, R. 59 Kananaskis Summit 71 Khadiagala, G. M. 161–2

Index   201 Kornegay, F. 151–2 Kutesa, Sam 105 Landsberg, C. 151–2 Le Pere, G. 155 leaders, roles of 9 Lee, D. 41, 50, 54 legal instruments, corporate social responsibility (CSR) 124–6 legitimacy: of representation 140; of rulers and regimes 135–6; of traditional authorities 138 leverage 162, 163, 164–5; Rwanda 169–73 liberation forces 160 Libya 76; Ugandan intervention 105 Libya, representatives of 135 lobbying 32; Uganda 102 Lomé I 57 long decade 73, 74 Lopes, C. 50 Lukes, S. 99 Lyons, T. 161–2 Mamdani, M. 3 Man, the State and War (Waltz) 133, 144–5 marginalisation 21, 39, 145, 150 market power 39 Marrakesh Agreement 41 Martin, W. G. 152 Mbeki, Thabo 70, 121 middle powers 152, 156 migration 156 Miliband, David 72 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 71, 86, 121 mimetic challenge 35, 37 MINECOFIN 86 Mische, A. 158 Mobutu Sese Seko 100 Mohan, G. 153 Moon, C. 159 Moravcsik, A. 131 Morton, A. D. 52 ‘Most-Favoured Nation’ clause 60 Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) (Zimbabwe) 69–70 Mozambique, bilateral relationships 76 Mshomba, R. E. 54, 55 Mugabe, Robert 68–70, 130 multi-polarity 150–1 multi-stakeholder initiatives 122 multilateral negotiations 23 multilateral relationships 9, 64; corporate

social responsibility (CSR) 122; delays in agreements 51; see also World Trade Organization (WTO) multilateralism 8, 21 Murithi, T. 21 Museveni government see Uganda Museveni, Yoweri 107; autocracy 110–11; presidential style 101–2 nation-building 137, 161; see also statebuilding national identity 136, 137–9; Rwanda 166–7 nationalism 147 negative leverage 164 neo-colonialism 151 neo-patrimonialism 160 neocolonised postcolonialism 19 neoliberalism 52; and corporate social responsibility (CSR) 118 neopatrimonialism 49, 140 New Labour, Africa policy 67–72 New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) 70, 121, 140 NGOs, loss of voice 75 Nigeria: corporate social responsibility (CSR) 124–5; international role 8–9 Nkunda, Laurent 170–1 non-state agency 6 non-tariff barriers 52 Nye, J. 99 Nyerere, Julius 136–7 Obasanajo, Olusegun 70 objectification, of African states 39 O’Brien, R. 52 oil corporations, corporate social responsibility (CSR) 122 Okinawa Summit 70 omnibalancing 162 Organisation of African Unity (OAU), UN reform demands 24–5 Our Common Interest 72 ownership 138; of domestic policy 99–100 Oxfam 43 participation 26, 138 paternalism 67 peace-making, Uganda 105 peer recognition 154 Penfold, Peter 68 polarity, shifts in 8 policies, image management 100 post-Cold War 20, 162

202   Index post-Washington Consensus approach 50 poverty alleviation 117 Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) (Rwanda) 86 power asymmetries 52, 63, 151–2 power, exercise of 99 power hierarchies, effects of 31 Power, M. 153 power shifts 8 preferential agreements 55, 62 preferential market access 52 private sector, development role 73 Product RED Initiative 114, 115, 121 protectionism 52 Protocol on Relations between Regional Economic Communities and the AU 31, 32 public-private sectors, corporate social responsibility (CSR) 122 Razali Plan 24 realism 146–7 reciprocity 52 recognition 160 regime security 158, 159–61; usefulness of approach 173; see also Rwanda regional agency 6 Regional Economic Partnership Agreements (REPAs) 57 regional integration 60 regional security 160; Rwanda 167–8 regional trade agreements 45 regionalism 31 regulatory regionalism 60 representatives, of states 134, 140–1 resistance: discourse as 40; strategies of 41 responsibility to protect 25 Reyntjens, F. 166, 167 Rice, Condoleezza 108 rise of Africa thesis 52 Rosberg, C. G. 146 RPF 165–6, 167, 169–71 Rwanda: agriculture 91; aid dependency 82–5, 161; aid policy framework 85–7; aid priorities 88–9, 90; aid relationships 168; autonomy and survival 9–10; balancing 169–73; bilateral relationships 76; challenges of Chinese aid 93–4; Chinese aid 84, 87, 89–94; civil society 171–2; colonial legacy 168; context and overview 81–2, 158–9; DAC aid 83, 87–8; data sources 83; and Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) 167–8, 169, 170–3; dependency and agency 85–9;

domestic politics 169–70; domestic security 166–7; donor coordination 87–8; education 91–2; elections 2010 169–70; genocide 86, 164–5; genocide ideology 167; health 92; infrastructure 92–3; international criticism 171–2; international security 168–9; leverage 164, 169–73; national identity 166–7; ‘never again’ narratives 166–7; non-Dac aid 84–5, 85, 87; policy goals 86–7; population 86–7; post-genocide 166; power relations 89; regime security 159–61; regional security 167–8; RPF 165–6, 167, 169–71; six pillar programme 86; sources of aid 82–4; summary and conclusions 94–5, 173–4; transport 92–3 Saguier, M. 52, 59 Scott, J. 37, 50 Sea Island Summit 71 securitising discourses 11 security see regime security; regional security self-help 43 semi-peripheral states 152, 156 Sendashonga, Seth 170 Sharman, J. C. 35, 41, 45 Short, Clare 67, 69 Sicurelli, D. 60, 61 Sierra Leone, UK intervention 68 Singapore Issues 59, 63 Sino–African relations 151, 153 Smith, N. 41 social investment 116 Socially Responsible Investment Index 121 solidarity, regional political 21–2 Somalia, Ugandan intervention 104–11 South Africa: BASIC initiative 30; corporate social responsibility (CSR) 123, 125; international relations 153–6; international role 8–9; as regional power 155–6 south–south cooperation, corporate social responsibility (CSR) 125 sovereign states 146–7 sovereignty 57, 150, 152 special and differential (S&D) treatment principle 52 Spivak, G. 19, 21 Spruyt, H. 148 state agency 9–10; African states 136–41; collective action 139–40; collective

Index   203 identity 136–7; concept of 129–30; context and overview 129–31; politics of 135–6; possibilities of 132–5; representation 140–1; summary and conclusions 141–2; theoretical approaches to 131–2; Western reactions 140–1; see also international relations state-building 146–7; see also nationbuilding state formation 130 statehood 145–6, 160 states: capabilities 140; effectiveness 140; individual interests 152; individual representation 134; relations with society 129; sovereign states 146–7; weak 145–8 Stoneman, C. 60–1 strategies of resistance 41 strategies of the weak 154 strength, internal 9 strong states 147 structural adjustment 140 structural constraints 52 sub-regional agency 6 sub-saharan Africa, as peripheral 159–61 Sudan 106–7 support organisations 42–3, 46 supra-nationalism 147–9 survival 159–61 sustainable development 117 tariff levels 55 tax havens 35 Taylor, I. 52, 155 temporality 158 Third Worldism 57 Thompson, C. 60–1 threats, internal and external 161 Trade, Development and Co-operation Agreement (TDCA) 57 trade liberalisation 57 trade partners 56 Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPs) accord 54, 55 Traidcraft report 61–2 training, WTO provision 42 transnational agency 6 transnational corporations (TNCs), human rights 117 transport, Rwanda 92–3 Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) (South Africa) 55 Tunis Summit 26 Tussie, D. 52, 59

Uganda: aid relationships 103; conditionality 99; context and overview 97–8; crisis resolution 106; Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) conflict 10–11; engagement with West 102–3; global war on terror (GWOT) 106, 107, 109, 110; image management 100–4; in Liberia 105; peace-making 105, 109; personalised informal diplomacy 101–2; public relations 102; relations with West 107–8; Somali intervention 104–11; summary and conclusions 111–12; Western support 106 Ugandan–Sudanese relations 106–7 UK-based academic thought and institutions 66 UK–Eritrea trade forum 76–7 UK policy: Africa’s changing international role 74–6; Blair government 67–72; Brown government 72; Conservative Party 73; context and overview 65; G8 70–1; governance 77; human rights 77; moral mission 77; Sierra Leone 68; summary and conclusions 76–7; Zimbabwe 68–70 UN Framework Convention on Climate Change: Copenhagen conference 28, 29–30; Nairobi conference 28–9 UNAMID 168 uni-multipolar power system 20 unitary nature 158 United Kingdom: African communities 66; diplomatic and aid missions 72–3; importance for agency 65–7; see also UK policy United Nations: Africa Group see Africa Group; Africa's position 19; common position on UN reform 24–7; democratisation 26; disparate views of 25; failure of reform 26–7; legitimacy 5 United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA) review 60 United Nations Global Compact 114, 116, 118 United States: African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) 54–5; aid relationships 75; Doha demands 37; relations with Uganda 107–8 veto, demand for 25–6 Vision 2020 (Rwanda) 86–7 Wade, Abdoulaye 70 Wallerstein, I. 20, 156

204   Index Waltz, K. 131, 133, 134, 144–5, 149 Waphakabulo, James 107 weak states 145–8; maximising agency 161–5; regime security 159–61 Wendt, A. 132, 133, 144, 148 Western analyses 149–50 Western states, reactions to regimes 140–1 Whitfield, L. 99–100 Wight, C. 98–9, 132, 134–5 Wilkinson, R. 35, 37, 50 Williams, D. 138, 140 Williams, M. 52 World Bank, Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper 138 World Economic Forum 115 World State 148

World Summit on Sustainable Development 121 world trade: Africa in 53–5; structures 52 World Trade Organization (WTO) 34–5, 51; African activism 39–40; African states in 53–4; capacity building 42–3; increased African presence 43–4; summary and conclusions 46–7; trade liberalisation 57 writing documents, support for 42–3 Yaoundé Conventions 57 Young, T. 138 Zimbabwe, UK policy 68–70 Zondi, S. 8