Introduction

At the beginning of the twenty-first century African governments and mainstream commentators asserted that the new millennium belonged to the continent. Such optimism rose as the door closed on the twentieth century and the distressed state of affairs that had confronted many African states during its decades, serving to further Africa's marginalisation from the global economy. Devastating human catastrophes expressed by the horrors of the Rwandan genocide, the impact of the one-size-fits-all structural adjustments programmes, clientelism, neo-patrimonial politics, unbridled external debt, added to inter- and intra-state conflicts to convince the world ‘that Africa does not have meaningful politics only humanitarian disasters’ (Dunn and Shaw, 2001, p. 1).

Political rhetoric aside, on the cusp of the new millennium Africa's role and place in international politics and, indeed, in international relations theory had become somewhat obsolete. This is to the extent that the prevailing view in Western scholarship on Africa's development discourse was based on a self-proclaimed belief that any engagement with Africa amounted to ‘saving the continent’ from the scourge of human poverty and deprivation. In short, Africa became what post-colonial African scholars like Frantz Fanon and Edward Said, amongst others, noted the ‘mirror in which the West defines itself’ (Dunn and Shaw, 2001, p. 3). Such thinking was rooted in the view that Africa represented a passive, voiceless space in which Western thought and philosophy was the hegemonic theory that offered the best practice on how to rehabilitate the continent's ills and prevent its self-destruction. Projects like the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the UK's Commission for Africa (CFA), and Canada's All Africa Action Plan became frameworks for engaging with the continent in the twenty-first century.

The twenty-first century represents the opportunity to redefine African identity in international politics. This entails a political and economic renewal aimed at not only dispelling the negative Western media images of ‘a hopeless continent’,1 but also that of a revision on how Africa should be interpreted in the theoretical assumptions of international relations. One such area of inquiry is Africa's increasing engagement with strategic partners from the Global South.

The emergence of the Global South represents a constellation of interests that are not only reconfiguring power relations between the North–South but also reflecting a level of South–South development engagements that are challenging the existing orthodoxy of the ‘Washington Consensus’ and Francis Fukuyama's ‘End of History’ (1992). With Asian economies brandishing their own form of successful economic models, this found hope amongst African countries wishing to chart a similar trajectory. Moreover, with the same set of socio-economic challenges confronting the majority of the countries in the South, it seemed natural that the philosophy and principles of the Non-Aligned Movement, which originally brought the developing world together into a broad alliance in the early years of the Cold War would become the platform for Southern collaboration in the twenty-first century.

But for Africa interacting with the Global South is more than just about reaffirming historical platitudes. It is about finding new partners that can revitalise the continent's frail development project. This must be located within the context of increased trade and investment linkages and new forms of development assistance that can renew the impetus for socio-economic development.

Yet, Africa is also considered to be of geo-strategic significance for the powerful economies within the Global South seeking to expand and modernise their industrial output and sustain their successful growth objectives. And so the relationship between Africa and the emerging powers from the South has become a symbiotic one in which resource diplomacy, development assistance, seeking new markets, and forging a consensus around reforming the global order that would be more inclusive, equitable and multilateral in nature are points of interaction.

This shift in relations has, indeed, created new impulses in Africa's external relations. The most obvious of these is that Africa's traditional relationships with the developed North is being offset by the competing interests from the South, most notably, China and India. How this should be interpreted has become the subject of intense speculation, not to mention widespread belief that the continent is in the middle of a ‘second scramble’.

There are two competing schools of thought trying to disaggregate this engagement by compartmentalising Africa's relationship with the emerging powers into rigid and oversimplified arguments. The first takes a rather narrow view that the engagement by the emerging powers in Africa is purely exploitative, extractive, and destructive. Their conclusion is that these new actors are the ‘new imperial’ powers with a ‘colonialist project’ that will perpetuate Africa's underdevelopment.

The second approach asserts that the engagement is benign and that the new emerging powers do not threaten Africa's development. Instead, proponents of this view believe that Africa's engagements with these Southern giants will assist states in achieving their development objectives. The polarisation of the debate has served only to mask the nuances inherent in how these actors behave and interact with economies on the African continent and whether they are refuelling Africa's development prospects.

In light of the above considerations, this special edition on Africa's relations with the emerging powers of the South is aimed at exploring whether the new actors offer a viable alternative or is it more of the same. So far the rhetoric has favourably interpreted this engagement as providing real political and economic benefits to Africa. While true that the new actors have boosted the continent's moribund infrastructure, created and connected markets, made goods more accessible, increased Africa's leverage in the global system and assisted with socio-economic development through the provision of training programmes, construction of hospitals and schools, and research and development programmes, it is unclear whether their modus operandi differs fundamentally from the traditional actors or guided by self-interest of accessing Africa's energy and other natural resources to aid their own national development priorities.

This collection of articles provides insights into these and other pending questions around the long-term impact of Africa's ensuing engagement with the emerging powers from the South. Opening with Cornelissen's contours of Africa's changing international relations landscape in the twenty-first century, the author highlights that Africa's trajectory towards the emerging powers of the South requires news ways of understanding international hierarchy, hegemony and power. This is juxtaposed with Shaw, Cooper and Chin's article, which contextualises Africa's governance framework within broad alliances like the emergence of the BRICs2 and their general implications for multilateralism and the pending effects this has for Africa. Taylor furthers the argument on South-South alliances by examining the implications of the India–Brazil–South Africa (IBSA) engagement for multilateralism within the context of activism and reformist positions aimed at international trade regimes like the WTO Doha Development negotiations.

The four case studies that follow on Brazil, China, India and South Africa provide a more expansive insight into the relations that each country has crafted with Africa. Each of the case studies situates the bilateral relationship with Africa on the push and pull factors that influence the engagement and defines the African identity in the foreign policy agendas of the respective countries. Each case study article concludes with a view to interpreting whether relations with Africa represent an opportunity, threat or mix of both.

One fundamental aspect of African international relations, that is significantly under-explored, is the agency attributed to African actors themselves. Kornegay and Landsberg conclude this special edition by assessing to what extent Africa is managing this engagement with the emerging powers and in essence if an African response can be harnessed.

As much as this special edition seeks to disaggregate the behaviour of the new actors in Africa's international relations, the guest editors recognise that the country studies identified in this collection are by no means the only actors from the South creating new continental impulses. In fact, as the first decade of the twenty-first century draws to a close, African governments have nurtured an array of engagements with countries from the Gulf, rising South East Asian nations like South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore, as well as Russia, all of which seem to be following a similar trajectory of relations.

Therefore as we begin to contemplate Africa's engagement with the emerging powers of the South, this not only compels the debate to consider the rivalries with Northern actors, but also obliges scholars of contemporary African politics to understand the competition this creates between and amongst the emerging powers on the one hand and the extent to which these emerging engagements are influencing intra state–civil society relations on the other hand. Perhaps a cautious optimism best serves as a starting point as Africa charts a new direction in its international engagements.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sanusha Naidu

  *Research Director, China in Africa Programme, FAHAMU, Stellenbosch, Cape Town, South Africa. Email: [email protected].

Lucy Corkin

 **Research Associate, Africa-Asia Centre, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Email: [email protected].

Hayley Herman

***Research Manager, Centre for Chinese Studies, Stellenbosch University, South Africa. Email: [email protected].

Notes

The phrase was first coined to describe Africa by The Economist on the front cover of its 13 May 2000 edition.

BRICs refers to Brazil, Russia, India and China. The acronym was coined by Goldman Sachs in 2001 to describe the rapid developing emerging economies of the South.