The African Union as a foreign policy player: African agency in international cooperation

Introduction

The African Union (hereafter AU) is a complex organisation at the interstices of bilateral and multilateral foreign policy execution in Africa. In the first instance, the African continent’s future largely rests in the hands of the AU Commission. The AU is the face of Africa and represents continental interest when it negotiates and implements [international] agreements on issues such as international trade, international law, international security and other important issues. However, most of the precepts and codes in these issue areas are developed elsewhere, both in the West, and often also in the East. The challenge for the AU is to reconcile what are pre-determined, different forms of foreign funding and support, with African preferences and interests. As such, the organisation demonstrates externally oriented agency in its attempts to reconcile international agendas, while it incepts its own new regimes for the continent. This epitomises an organisation that finds itself in the perennial quest to protect African foreign policy agency in international politics, while it forges a unique and actionable course for African multilateralism and regionalism.

According to Wight, as cited in Brown (2012), agency is defined as the ability to do something. Article 3(e) of the AU Constitute Act vests a foreign policy obligation on the AU by requiring that it “encourage [s] international cooperation, taking due account of the Charter of the United Nations” (AU, 2000: 5). Giving the AU this emphasis makes it easier for both Africa and the international community to relate since it reduces the transaction cost of having to deal on a bilateral basis (see Abbott & Snidal, 1998).

This chapter considers the role of the AU as a foreign policy actor in global politics. It makes use of the concept of “agency” as an empirical element and dimension of the continent’s foreign policymaking and implementation. It mainly focuses on how the AU projects foreign policy. It argues that the AU projects its foreign policy through agency.

This chapter unfolds in three broad parts. The first part contextualises the notion of agency as a function of foreign policy. It operationalises the concept at both the abstract and empirical level in the AU foreign policy process. Thereafter, African agency is juxtaposed against coloniality and imperialism, thereby elucidating the historical and structural context in which AU foreign policy agency obtains. In a second part, the role of agents or elites shaping African agency is discussed. It pays special attention to the role of summitry through which agents seek to give African agency meaning and intentionality. The processes through which various actors seek to exert agency are described. A third part looks at African agency in the AU’s international partnerships. Finally, two major instances of collective diplomacy that put African agency to the test are analysed in order to illustrate the current limits of the AU as a foreign policy actor.