The African Union and the Multipolar World

Editor’s note: This essay is available in our print issue, Pan-African Dreams. Buy the issue here.

In 1994, Ghanaian economist, George Ayittey, coined the term ‘African solutions to African problems’ on the wisdom that Africa would have every incentive to push for the success of internally created plans and policies. The concept was popularized in the early 2000s by African leaders like former South African president, Thabo Mbeki, who sought to limit external (read as Western) interference in African affairs and give African continental institutions a greater say on internal issues. The concept could be seen as a direct challenge to the US-led Western world influence in Africa that had maintained a stranglehold on Africa since the end of colonialism and the rise of the unipolar global order in the 1990s. The unipolar world presented a weakened era for the AU as a continental body. The AU had morphed from the OAU so as to deepen integration and hasten towards a single (federal) continental government. However, divisions remained as did Western influence that sought to keep Africa divided and the AU weak for the West to remain dominant as a benefactor of the AU through aid and intervention (as seen in the various intervention by the West in West Africa and the Horn of Africa). However, the ushering in of the multipolar world, incubated by both the rise of China and some global blunders by the US, offers the AU a lifeline to work for a deeper union in Africa and to acquire more agency in global affairs.

Schol ars have now agreed that the global order has entered a multipolar world. The current multipolar world is characterized by the economic and political rise of China, which has become more assertive and openly challenging to the dominance of the US. We have also seen the resurgence of Russia, which, according to its president, Vladimir Putin, undertook a ‘special military operation’ in Ukraine to stop the encroachment of the US and NATO into its vicinity. This multipolar world is also characterized by the rise of regional hegemonies like Iran, which are challenging the US and Western-driven global order, as well as the fall of the influence of the Western model of democracy after the success of the Chinese model.

Some scholars may argue that the concept of a multipolar world is a façade (or that at best the world would move into a bipolar world between the US and China). Such scholars would only be deliberately ignoring the rise of Iran, whose influence is felt across the Middle East. They would also be ignoring the resurgence of Russia, which for almost 17 months has checkmated the NATO machinery in Ukraine, and ignoring the desired global outlook by France and Germany’s leadership that has sought to diffuse US influence and move into multi-polarity.

These developments have seen a changed positioning of Africa in global relations, and this has the potential to give Africa influential agency in the multipolar order. Africa has been courted by almost every country or regional bloc that seeks global influence. In 2000, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation was established, and in the years since, has grown into a multilateral forum for Africa-China cooperation on all facets of development without the Western-driven unipolar world democracy and human rights conditionalities. The year 2000 also witnessed the establishment of the Africa-EU Partnership. In 2008, the India-Africa Forum Summit was established. Russia established the Russia-Africa Summit in 2019, where Russia sought to rekindle deeper relations with Africa.

The various cooperation summits and forums have shown that various powers that seek global power now look to Africa for cooperation. There have been contradictory engagements where at some points these powers would seek tailor-made cooperation with individual African countries while at the same time engaging all African countries as a bloc. It is such contradictions that should be corrected by the AU as the continental body, with its vast sixty years of experience. These contradictions prove the desperation of the global hegemons and the rising powers to bring Africa within their ambits. In the current era, various European governments including the EU, have changed their tone from one of superiority to that of equal partner cooperation. For instance, in March 2023, French President, Emmanuel Macron, stated, ‘We want to be long-term partners (with Africa),’ and also acknowledged that, ‘Africa is a theatre of competition. It has to be done in a fair user framework.’ Various US leaders since the presidency of Barack Obama, like Hilary Clinton, Rex Tillerson, Antony Blinken and Janet Yellen, have also tried to pacify Africa and talk of mutually beneficial partnerships. In some cases, they have also warned Africa against being colonized by China. To counter Western manoeuvres, the Eastern bloc dominated by China and Russia has saddled on the history of Africa, reminding the world that it was the West that colonized, dehumanized and underdeveloped Africa; arguing that the East did not colonize but actually supported Africa against Western colonialism to the realization of independence.

The rise of the multipolar global order has come with both challenges and opportunities for the AU. On challenges, one can look at the issue of alignment for the continental body. Being a body built by states with heterogeneous allegiances, it would be hard for the body to take a definitive standpoint on alignment. The question of the Russia-Ukraine war at the UN General Assembly showed that Africa was still divided among itself and still handled external affairs along individualistic lines: in the non-binding UN General Assembly vote on the Resolution on Condemning Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine on 2 March 2022, 28 African countries voted in favour, 17 abstained, eight were absent and one was against the resolution. The voting patterns proved that Africa had not matured to a union where interests in relation to external policy are harmonized in a way that proves that the continent is ready for deeper union.

Another major challenge that the continent faces is the racial divide between the Arab north and the predominantly Black remainder of the continent. Past events have shown that no matter how much the continent may try to play united, the racial divide is real and needs to be confronted frankly at the AU level. The debate on who should celebrate the Moroccan successes at the FIFA 2022 football World Cup hosted by Qatar, where the successes were celebrated by one of the Moroccan players as wins for Arabs and Muslims and not mentioning Africa was a major case. There were also the racist and xenophobic rants of the Tunisian President, Kais Saied, in February 2023. Saied informed the meeting of the Tunisian National Security Council that the wave of Black migrants into Tunisia was a deliberate move to dilute the Arab-ness of the Tunisians and make the country more racially Black. The internal racial divide North Africa and the rest of Africa also calls for action by the AU to harmonize African cultures and created celebrated diversities. The situation is mostly exacerbated by Western media and academia and in some cases global institutions like the World Bank that bunch North Africa with the predominantly Arab Middle East, giving rise to the term ‘Middle East and North Africa’ region.