AU: Foreign policy actor and foreign policy maker
The AU occupies an important role and position in (African) foreign policy agency. As the primary multilateral institution in Africa, it focuses on collective diplomacy in the continent. This foreign policy mandate derives from the Constitutive
Act [of the AU], which states that the AU shall “promote and defend African common positions on issues of interest to the continent and its peoples” as well as “encourage international cooperation” and “establish the necessary conditions which enable the continent to play its rightful role in the global economy and in international negotiations” (AU, 2002: 5-6).
There is no rigid template as to who can conceive common African positions. However, most of what results as common positions often emanates from the preferences designed prior at the national level, or from those proposed by an incumbent AU Commission Chairperson.1 Thereafter, various heads of state and government and ministers (the Executive Council) convene to forge common positions for the entire continent (Bah et al., 2014). Finally, implementation is the preserve of the AU Commission (AUC) Chairperson’s cabinet [comprising of his/her deputy and commissioners], working closely with the Permanent Representatives Committee (PRC) to focus on the implementation of those common positions. However, once the AU has codified its position, the AUC Chairperson often works closely with the AU Chairperson (a nominated head of state or government) who acts as the diplomatic face of the AU in international affairs.
As such, the AU’s Constitutive Act gives the AU foreign policy agency with the Chairperson of the AU Commission as the de facto chief diplomatic figure. Nevertheless, a number of other foreign policy actors are found across the AU’s structure and attendant procedures. The primary actors include the Assembly of Heads of State and Government (AHSG), the Executive Council (of Ministers), the PRC, and commissioners in various tiers of the AU Commission (AU Commission, 2015). All these actors are responsible for coordinating and reconciling interests and preferences between sub-regional organisations (or Regional Economic Communities/Regional Mechanisms), member states, civil society organisations, business entities and other interest groups.
This task of harmonisation and reconciliation of the various interests and preferences amounts to an act of framing and implementing the foreign policy positions for the continent. At the same time, being an organisation driven by its member states, its collective foreign policy is determined by which member states enjoy influence at any given time and to what extent they can be successful in forging a common and durable consensus across particular issues. However, an incumbent AU Chairperson and/or Chairperson of the AU Commission does not necessarily influence these positions, but they are often a result of consensus building between all member states (Hardt, 2014: 47). This consensus creates buy-in for various common positions.
African agency: Concept and practice
Agency can be defined as the "faculty or state of acting or exerting power”, in “a more nuanced notion” that can accommodate “a variety of entities ... differentiate between them, and can locate agency in relation to the social contexts from which it arises and which shape, enable and constrain it” (Brown, 2012: 1894).
This implies purposive action, which, among other things, is representative. This representation takes place within an international structure, involving a social dimension that has “both meaning and intentionality” (ibid.). Yet, structurally Africa is on the periphery of the international order. This comes with the cost of having to emulate or depend on other regions and powers in international affairs (Bach, 2013: 7-11). Perhaps missing from Wight and Brown’s accounts, but often inferential in most International Relations (IR) texts, is the structural imbalance in which African agency takes place.
African agency has several characteristics. First, agency is a political action. It is relayed through both rhetoric and action. Brown (2012) mainly focuses on the action and leaves out rhetoric. In an international political space and with limited resources, given the relatively weaker material and financial position in international affairs, rhetoric (however soft) plays an important, greater role than material considerations in African agency in international affairs. A key example is the popular rhetoric of "African solutions for African problems"—the basis for negotiations with the United Nations Organisation (UNO) on the modalities of peacekeeping for instance—and concomitant African attempts to build institutions which Esmenjaud (2014) considers anti-imperial phantoms.
Second, the anti-imperialist posture and anti-colonial intellectual activism around, say, Pan-Africanism and an African Renaissance—from whence the rhetoric emanates—is not mere discourse but one with a purpose to spur African agency in the immediate and long term. Such discourse is useful in “othering” other actors in an anarchic international milieu of self-help. It is evinced by the promulgation of Pan-African positions (often backed by intellectual activism) in efforts to co-design and disseminate norms and regimes in global politics. Correspondingly, Niang (2016: 458,459) posits that the
global commons [such as freedom, solidarity, human rights] was [not] an outflow of imperial undertakings as assumed by international intellectuals ... African political actors viewed their responsibility as global and their vocation as universal ... taking into account both the specificity and the universality of African concerns, values and aspirations.
More recently, African internationalists have significantly influenced prevalent international norms, even though often, the credit accrues to others, elsewhere. For instance, the African, Francis Deng, was instrumental in shaping the notion of "sovereignty to protect” and the first to coin the “sovereignty as responsibility” norm (Evans, 2008: 35-37).
Third, the ability of the AU as a foreign policy actor to “exert power” in global terms is currently an aspiration rather than a reality. Africa was a relative latecomer to international politics that is largely driven by world regions with which it has an acrimonious past. Hence, the organisation has inadvertently been drawn into institutionalised international partnerships mainly designed by the outside. These aim to build up the institution and achieve reconciliation with thriving international organisations. As a result, the AU reproduces itself in the
A U—Foreign policy and agency 3 5 image of its counterparts such as the EU and the UN.2 As a corollary, it has limited latitude to exert agency based on its very own interests.
The AU’s quest for African agency is not only a question of contestation but also one of overcoming coloniality and of making positive contributions to international cooperation.
