Pan-African initiatives in global governance

Abstract

As recently as 2009, a five hundred page textbook on international relations did not even mention the African Union in its index. The same applied to the Wikipedia entry on international organizations until a colleague of this author corrected that omission in 2011. The mainstream international relations literature has the perspective that our continent is marginal, the AU invisible, and Africa is a problem, that is spoken to, or spoken for.

African agency in global governance is a perspective whose time has come. Drawing on constructivist and transformational theories, this paper explores how the African Union family or organizations, including its regional communities such as COMESA, EAC, ECOWAS, and SADC, seek to engage with and negotiate Africa’s positioning in global governance. These Pan-African initiatives go far beyond anything that ASEAN, the Arab League, or the OAS have succeeded in.

This paper draws upon research by the author and Kiki Edozie for their forthcoming book The African Union’s Africa. (Michigan State University Press, 2014)