Constituting actors and processes at AU: African foreign policy making
Collective positions and diplomacy are the pivot for Africa’s engagement with the rest of the world. The echelon of African collective diplomacy is the AHSG. It incepted international partnerships with the EU, the UN, the US and South America (most of which were signed as a result of two key heads of state—President Thabo Mbeki (South Africa) and President Olusegun Obasanjo (Nigeria)) working alongside a handful of others (AU, 2014). However, the bargaining also requires the active involvement of the Chairperson of the AU Commission. During the early period of the AU, the leading heads of state worked closely with then Chairperson Alpha Konare to successfully oversee regional common positions (AU, 2002). Konare, a former head of state, was a particularly astute diplomat who oversaw robust partnerships with NATO and the EU, where African agency trenchantly expressed itself on matters of norms and principles—evinced by the Cairo and Lisbon summits of 2000 and 2007, respectively.
The success of African collective diplomacy in international cooperation also depends on the role of an incumbent Chairperson of the AU Commission. The chairman of the Commission is essentially the chief diplomat. According to Gassama (2013), the capability of the OAU/AU largely depends on the diplomatic fortitude of the chief of the AUC. Correspondingly, in the domain of peace and security, the Protocol on the Peace and Security Council (of 2002) mandates the Chairperson of the AU Commission to incept and pursue partnerships for peace and security. It was for this reason that Alpha Konare worked with then NATO Secretary General, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, to sign the first AU-NATO partnership in 2005. Years later, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma as AUC Chairperson exercised the same privilege to incept and sign a new strategic partnership with Norway even though the AU had imposed a moratorium on new partnerships, because they were deemed too numerous. It is important to realise that African agency also depends on the individual officeholder in question and, as such, on the AUC Chairperson's ability to mobilise a majority of AU member states to adhere to African common positions.
In recent years, AUC chairpersons have had a harrowing time getting African countries to adhere to African common positions in international affairs. In 2006, AU member states signed the Banjul Formula whereby they agreed to collate their bilateral preferences through the AUC. This, in order for the Commission to speak and act on behalf of the continent—especially in forums such as the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC), the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) and Korea-Africa Economic Cooperation (KOAFEC). However, AU member states have gradually shown increasing reluctance to abide by the Banjul Formula. This, because the majority of small states felt that their bilateral interests were being neglected in favour of those of the major member states (Sanqu Bassu, personal communication, Addis Ababa: 2016).
Overall, however, inter-state bargaining and the negotiations of the 1990s shaped the notion of “leadership” within Africa’s collective diplomacy. During this period, Nigeria and South Africa emerged as de facto lead states. In order to isolate Gaddafi, as well as create an ad hoc burden-sharing formula, the two states signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) which exhorted the two states’ ministries of foreign affairs to compare notes before representing the continent in international affairs. Both states had something to offer to Africa’s collective diplomacy: “while South Africa under Mbeki brought a sense of urgency to African diplomacy, Nigeria ... brought histoiy and diplomatic experience, as well as a sense of legitimacy to South Africa’s post-apartheid role in Africa” (Landsberg, 2008: 205). The other members of "the Big Five”—such as Algeria and Egypt—with the exception of Libya—appeared less interested in this continent-wide influence. But this arrangement did not last.
For instance, Africa’s aspiring “hegemons” have faced enormous challenges in the area of peace and security, especially in regard to role playing and burden sharing. Compared to the first decade of the AU, African states have generally reduced their commitment to a common agency on African security. The hegemonic aspirants—Nigeria and South Africa—no longer contribute as many resources to African security as they used to in the early 2000s.7 African leadership during the early 2000s evinced regional agency in international politics. However, the present trend portends a reduction in regional agency.
This further signifies the inability to rely on the idea of African hegemony as a sustainable pillar propping up continental organisation and informing continental foreign policy agency in any way.8 In the period since, Nigeria, Libya, Senegal, Algeria, Ethiopia and South Africa, mostly for domestic reasons, have taken less interest in strengthening the AU and its agency with the outside.9 Given the nominalism of the Zuma presidency in all other respects. South Africa exceptionally played a key role with Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma at the helm of the AUC (2012— 2017) to actualise the AU’s "Agenda 2063" (Landsberg, 2014). Lately, a figure like President Paul Kagame could inject new energy and urgency into promoting collective African agency when Rwanda played a meaningful role in actualising the African Continental Free Trade Agreement (AU, 2018).
Leadership at state level in African regionalism is a complex issue. This manifests in the difficulty with which big and/or capable states are unable to provide regional leadership. It is imperative to note that in order for Africa to pursue an effective foreign policy at the global level, it must first primarily tackle the issue of strategic leadership and "strategic citizenship".10 By example, the latter has been attended to and become standard practice in the way the EU executes the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) (Howorth, 2007), or the cases of NATO and other organisations (Leurdjik, 2003; Rieker, 2006). However, in the case of Africa, the issue remains a challenge.
As such, collective African foreign policy agency is significantly hampered by the lack of ever-present, ever-committed and recognised regional hegemons whose far reaching capabilities are able to consistently sustain continental postures. “Hegemony” connotes leadership. Ideally, regional hegemons should meet the following five-point criteria: there should be a delimited region with political, economic and cultural links; a willingness and preparedness of the hegemon to assume regional leadership; the hegemon possessing material and ideational capacities should influence the region; provision of collective public goods for the region; and acceptance by other states in the region (Flemes & Nolte, 2010: 1-14). Based on these criteria at least continent-wide, there is no
African state to qualify as a regional hegemon. This is despite Nigeria and South Africa harbouring hegemonic ambitions.
As such, the early prominence given to the AU as a foreign policy actor when supported by bigger member states early on did not last. Perhaps most important of all, the strategic interventions did not leave African agency depersonalised. The AU and its processes remain personality-driven. Certainly, human agents play a pivotal role in foreign policy, yet the lack of depersonalisation of African agency—especially at the level of the AHSG—has a far-reaching effect.
With personalisation and individualisation comes the risk of failure to institutionalise solutions to the problems confronting the organisation. It is the challenge of achieving sustainability and predictability in one’s interactions with others. One explanation is that the founding group for a collective continental organisation in 1963, heads of states such as Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere, and others came to espouse the idea of life presidencies or one-party states which revolved around personality cults. In other words, even beyond the OAU, few, if any, had an interest in a depersonalised or institutionally more autonomous AU. The successors to the founders who oversaw the CSSDCA, the Constitutive Act, and survived Gaddafi’s bid for leadership of the organisation failed to appreciate the imperative to depersonalise the different dimensions of African agency.
The result was that AU foreign policy agency rose and declined with certain strong personalities such as Thabo Mbeki, Olusegun Obasanjo, Meles Zenawi and Abdelaziz Bouteflika, let alone strong AUC chiefs such as Alpha Konare. The strategic partnerships the AU has embarked on attest to this.
