Defining Partners hip with Africa

Summary

Sten Widmalm, ‘Defining Partnership with Africa: Sweden's New Africa Policy and Strategies for Relations with Democratic and Authoritarian States’, Forum for Development Studies, 1999: 2, pp. 289–314.

What does it mean when Sweden declares that a ‘partnership relationship’ should be developed with Africa? This article discusses the content of Sweden's new partnership policy and some of its more problematic inherent contradictions, followed by a discussion of policy recommendations that could be used when the Swedish counterparts interact with African states with different types of regime. The purpose is to initiate a debate on which general principles, if any at all, for policy implementation could be utilised in such a diverse context as the African continent. The policy implementation principle that will be discussed say that the more democratic a state, the more contacts and support should be initiated with officials and representatives at a higher level in the political hierarchy. Conversely, the less democratic a state, the more efforts should be directed at establishing contacts on the individual and civil society level. According to such an interpretation of the partnership policy, support to the ruling elite, commercial forces and state institutions in authoritarian regimes is ruled out.