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Nkiwane, Tandeka. C. Africa and International Relations: Regional Lessons for a Global Discourse
2001, Political Science Review 22, no. 3: 279–290
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, Contributed by: Eva Brom
Abstract: Case studies, theories, and examples from Africa are exceedingly rare in international relations. Indeed, examples from Africa are, at best, valued for their nuisance potential. This article argues that the study of international relations is limited by this interpretation of Africa, and by a larger ignorance of African contributions. Key debates on the African continent surrounding the central concepts of mainstream international relations, including the state, power, and self-determination, are interrogated with a view to expanding their use in contemporary international relations. The examples of apartheid South Africa, the African debate on political economy and development, and African perspectives on questions raised by the liberal paradigm, are used to illustrate the importance of the region to the more global discourses. In examining the important contribution of African scholarship to debates central to international relations, this article highlights the necessity for engaging African scholars in the broader discourses of international relations.

Comment: The text criticizes the Western way of thinking of liberalism and can be used as a counterpoint to mainstream liberalism making it a good basis for a debate.

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Obi, Cyril. Nigeria’s foreign policy and transnational security challenges in West Africa
2008, Journal of Contemporary African Studies Vol.26, No.2, April 2008, 183-196
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, Contributed by: Atanas Malakchiev
Abstract:

This article explores how Nigeria's foreign policy has responded to transnational security challenges in West Africa. It engages in a conceptual overview of the discourse on transnational security and links this with a discussion of Nigeria's foreign policy towards West Africa. Of note is Nigeria's pursuit of a leadership role in the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), in its quest for security, economic integration and development. Several questions are posed: What do Nigerian policymakers consider to be the most significant transnational threats in West Africa? How and through what legitimate policies and instruments do they respond to such threats? How important is ECOWAS to Nigeria's attempt to respond to transnational threats? And how effective have Nigeria's attempts to influence the ECOWAS agenda in this regard been? Although ECOWAS has remained central to Nigeria's responses to transnational security threats in the subregion, the country has not been able to match its rhetoric on addressing transnational security threats with far-reaching concrete achievements. It is suggested that social transformation of Nigeria's current foreign policy (that is, to one focused and committed to putting people at its centre) and a change in the policies of dominant global powers towards West Africa would enhance human emancipation and eliminate the numerous insecurities confronting the peoples of the subregion.

Comment: The text offers an overview of security threats in West Africa and the ways that Nigeria has tried to address them using the mechanisms provided by the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS). Nigeria has sought a leadership role in this organization through economic and military aid to its members. The article can be used to illustrate the ways that a country can pursue its foreign policy through multilateral organizations such as ECOWAS.

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Odoom, Isaac, Adrews, Nathan. What/who is still missing in International Relations scholarship? Situating Africa as an agent in IR theorising
2016, Third World Quarterly 38, no. 1 (2016): pp. 42-60
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, Contributed by: Sarah Schmeitz
Abstract:

This paper engages with non-Western, specifically African, scholarship and insight with the goal of highlighting the importance of African contributions to IR theorising. We highlight the Western dominance in IR theorising and examine the inadequacy of the major analytical constructs provided by established IR theory in capturing and explaining shifting reality in Africa. We argue that African insights, experience and ideas present a challenge to dominant IR constructs and knowledge within the international system, and that these insights, when taken seriously, would enrich our understanding of IR. We show this by problematising some central (often taken-for-granted) IR concepts such as the state, liberalism and individualism and underscore the need to reconstruct more encompassing ‘stories’ and images to innovate, revise and potentially replace some of the conventional ‘stories’ that have been told in IR.

Comment: Provides a good overview on the importance of non-western perspectives within IR theory, useful to make students aware of the level of eurocentrism in IR.

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Pityana, Barney Nyameko. The truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa: perspectives and prospects
2018, Journal of Global Ethics, 14(2), pp. 194–207. doi: 10.1080/17449626.2018.1517819.
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Abstract:

Debate about the TRC has become necessary in South Africa today, 20 years since the final Report was handed over to government on 29 October 1998. Assessment of its efficacy and longer-term value is being undertaken, unfortunately, within an environment of intense disillusionment about the promise of constitutional democracy. This paper sets out the environment in which the TRC was established in 1996, its legal and constitutional frameworks, its achievements for creating a climate of reconciliation, for granting amnesty to perpetrators of human rights violations, and for setting a reparations framework. South Africans are conscious of grinding poverty and inequality, pervasive racism, and unfulfilled aspirations of the democratic settlement of 1994. What value, then was the TRC? This paper attempts a fair assessment, seeks to be honest about its grandiose claims, and undertakes a philosophical, political and ethical analysis of its achievements. Drawing on many studies on the TRC it seeks to chart a more rational course than some, noting that circumstances in Africa are such that the TRC is being revisited, The Gambia, for example, being the latest country that has introduced the TRC. Others may follow suit: Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, to name a few.

Comment: This article engages with the concept of transitional justice and reconciliation in truth commissions around Africa by reflecting specifically on South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its impact on South Africa. Suitable for courses on South African history, conflict resolution, transitional justice.

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Sackeyfio-Lenoch, Naaborko. The Ghana Trades Union Congress and the Politics of International Labor Alliances, 1957–1971*
2017, Sackeyfio-Lenoch, N. (2017) “The Ghana Trades Union Congress and the Politics of International Labor Alliances, 1957-1971*,” International Review of Social History, 62(2), pp. 191–213. doi: 10.1017/S0020859017000189.
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Abstract:

This article explores the motives of Ghana’s Trades Union Congress in
securing development assistance during the era of decolonization and early independence. African interests and agency in these complex processes of negotiation have not been sufficiently untangled to highlight the decisions that African trade unionists made as they aligned with, and fostered, international networks and alliances to meet particular development goals. By highlighting the perspectives and actions of Ghana’s trade union officials, the article demonstrates what Africans sought to achieve through connections to international trade union organizations. The Ghana case illustrates the ways in which African trade unionists actively engaged in the variable and competing politics and policies of local, regional, and global trade unionism in order to strengthen their union apparatus and meet shifting needs.

Comment: This article shows how a trade union functioned in sub-Saharan Africa’s first country to gain its independence from British colonial rule, and demonstrates how trade union diplomacy emerged as an important element of African national and international politics during the era of decolonisation. Through the lens of African labor interests and the actions of the Ghana Trade Union Congress, the article engages with the confluence of internationalism and decolonisation in post-independence African societies.

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Sarah Claire Dunstan. A Question of Allegiance: African American Intellectuals, Presence Africaine and the 1956 Congres des Ecrivains et Artistes Noirs
2015, Australia New Zealand American Studies Associations
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Abstract: Recent scholarship has demonstrated that in the period from 1945 through to the late 1950s African American intellectuals re-oriented their activism from an internationalist and human rights framed agenda towards a domestically bound struggle. This article will contribute to this literature by mapping out a facet of African American intellectual engagement with the African diaspora during this period. Of particular focus will be African American reactions to the journal Présence Africaine and the conference sponsored by the journal in 1956, le Congrès des écrivains et artistes noirs. Iwill argue that the experiences of a select group of African American delegates to this Congrès served to emphasise the radically different objectives and strategies of nationalities within the African diaspora, thereby consolidating black American perceptions of themselves as first, and foremost, American. In interrogating this diasporan dimension of the period, this article will shed light on a neglected aspect of African American history and expand the intellectual and political boundaries of the black freedom struggle.

Comment: Useful for discussions on African American activism in the early Cold War. Shows the discrepancy between the impact of anticommunism on radical activism and American foreign diplomacy championing for human rights. Should be used as an example after having established solid background knowledge on this topic.

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Sebhatu, Rahel Weldeab. Applying postcolonial approaches to studies of Africa-EU relations
2020, Applying postcolonial approaches to studies of Africa-EU relations. In "The Routledge handbook of EU-Africa relations". eds Haastrup, T., Mah Luís and Duggan, N. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge (Routledge international handbooks).
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Abstract:

This chapter outlines the importance of postcolonial approaches for the study of Africa-EU relations. It contextualises such approaches in negotiation practices and outcomes of the EU proposed Economic Partnership Agreements (EPAs). Though academic literature on Africa-EU relations tends to define such relations as being asymmetrical, the politics around the negotiations of the EPAs through postcolonial lenses reveals contestations around the assumptions of such asymmetries. The very constitution of the EU was also a product of colonial legacy. The pursuits of European colonisers stretched throughout the world, but unlike the Americas and Asia, Africa held a special place in the efforts to construct European economic integration. Since the 1990s, Africa-EU relations have been based on neoliberal principles, with the EU considering trade and market liberalisation as central to poverty reduction while African leaders have also equated it with development.

Comment: This chapter can be used in a course on European Integration and the European project, and how it interacts with the legacy of colonialism, as well as on projects of regionalism elsewhere.

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wa Thiong'o Ngugi. Decolonising the Mind: The Politics of Language in African Literature
19986,
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, Contributed by: Sara Kalman
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Comment: This book discusses how colonialism is still very relevant and aims to trace back the colonized countries', in this specific case Kenya, literature and language to its own roots. Highly interesting reading with first-hand experiences and accounts.

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Zondi, Siphamandla. Decolonising International Relations and Its Theory: A Critical Conceptual Meditation
2018, Politikon: South African Journal of Political Studies, 45(1), pp. 16–31.
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Abstract: One of the main implications of the push for transition from the monoculture of Eurocentric scientific knowledge towards the ecology of knowledge is to force us to pose the question: what does a decolonial turn in International Relations (IR) entail? This article grapples with this question in light of growing demands for a decolonial turn in knowledge and power. The aim is to meditate on this question with a view to open up new avenues for a structured conversation on decolonising IR and its theory. This imperative to decolonise is linked to the question of epistemic justice with implications for the epistemological structure underpinning IR, methodological frameworks for the study of IR, theoretical outlines and the teaching of the discipline. Epistemic justice is a necessity alongside historical justice for those on the margins of a world system constructed with the help of imperialism, systematic enslavement and colonialism. This article discusses the question of the decolonial turn in IR in the hope of stimulating debates on the views of the margins regarding the present state and the future of this area of knowledge, and thus move us closer to an ecology of knowledge and power.

Comment: This text can be used as an introduction to decolonization in IR to show opposed views to the mainly Eurocentric research. It is not very specific in its elaboration but underlines the need for a revision of the field of IR and its concepts. Rather, the article suggest a broad frame of the debate as a starting point to discussions about how we might go about shifting the geography of reason within International Relations from a Eurocentric one towards a "pluriversal multilogue of epistemologies".

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Zondi, Siphamandla. Decolonising International Relations and Its Theory: A Critical Conceptual Meditation
2018, Politikon 45(1): 16-31.
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, Contributed by: Andrea Bányácskiová
Abstract: One of the main implications of the push for transition from the monoculture of Eurocentric scientific knowledge towards the ecology of knowledge is to force us to pose the question: what does a decolonial turn in International Relations (IR) entail? This article grapples with this question in light of growing demands for a decolonial turn in knowledge and power. The aim is to meditate on this question with a view to open up new avenues for a structured conversation on decolonising IR and its theory. This imperative to decolonise is linked to the question of epistemic justice with implications for the epistemological structure underpinning IR, methodological frameworks for the study of IR, theoretical outlines and the teaching of the discipline. Epistemic justice is a necessity alongside historical justice for those on the margins of a world system constructed with the help of imperialism, systematic enslavement and colonialism. This article discusses the question of the decolonial turn in IR in the hope of stimulating debates on the views of the margins regarding the present state and the future of this area of knowledge, and thus move us closer to an ecology of knowledge and power.

Comment: The paper discusses the immensely colonial nature of the discipline of International Relations and thus the increasing need to decolonise not only IR, but knowledge and power in science, in general - great topic for discussion.

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