Changing Patterns of African International Relations

1964 ◽  
Vol 58 (3) ◽  
pp. 632-641 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Good

Whatever happened to the “radical,” “moderate,” and “conservative” African states we used to talk about not so long ago—say in early 1961? One wonders if the snapshot of African orientations, then in fair focus, has not become badly blurred.President Sekou Touré, once the radical foe of neo-colonialist African regimes, has more recently offered assurances that his nation opposed intervention in the internal affairs of other states and thus tacitly acknowledged the legitimacy of the states he had formerly condemned. Touré helped to prepare the way for the reconciliation of “radical” and “conservative” states at Addis Ababa, in May 1963, where the Organization of African Unity was formed. At that conference, another stormy petrel of West African radicalism, President Modibo Keita of Mali, observed that though the colonial system divided Africa, “it permitted nations to be born.” “African unity,” he declared, “requires full respect for the frontiers we have inherited from the colonial system.”

Author(s):  
Markus Kornprobst

This chapter examines contending African interpretations of peace and change; how some of these interpretations have come to constitute continental institutions; and how these institutions, in turn, have succeeded or failed to make a difference. Its argument is threefold. First, African interpretations of peace and change converge around a nexus of five elements: liberty, unity, development, pacific settlement of disputes and democracy. Second, this nexus left a major mark on continental institutions, first the Organization of African Unity and then the African Union. Third, although Africa’s record of peaceful change is very promising when one is to apply markers for peaceful change traditionally used in international relations, the continent has experienced very pronounced and persistent obstacles to implementing the five elements of the much more demanding nexus.


2016 ◽  
Vol 75 (4) ◽  
pp. 447-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ayala Levin

In the 1960s, Addis Ababa experienced a construction boom, spurred by its new international stature as the seat of both the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa and the Organization of African Unity. Working closely with Emperor Haile Selassie, expatriate architects played a major role in shaping the Ethiopian capital as a symbol of an African modernity in continuity with tradition. Haile Selassie's Imperial Modernity: Expatriate Architects and the Shaping of Addis Ababa examines how a distinct Ethiopian modernity was negotiated through various borrowings from the past, including Italian colonial planning, both at the scale of the individual building and at the scale of the city. Focusing on public buildings designed by Italian Eritrean Arturo Mezzedimi, French Henri Chomette, and the partnership of Israeli Zalman Enav and Ethiopian Michael Tedros, Ayala Levin critically explores how international architects confronted the challenges of mediating Haile Selassie's vision of an imperial modernity.


2002 ◽  
Vol 3 (8) ◽  
Author(s):  
Holger Hestermeyer

During their inaugural meeting in Durban, South Africa, on 9 July 2002 the African heads of state replaced the 39-year-old Organization of African Unity (OAU) with the latest international organization: the African Union (AU). With the exception of Morocco that was not a member of the OAU and Madagascar, whose president is not recognized by the OAU/AU all African heads of state attended the ceremony. The AU will be headquartered in Addis Ababa in the Federal Democratic Republic of Ethiopia.


2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 169-188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Guy Martin

Abstract The Pan-Africanists leaders’ dream of unity was deferred in favor of the gradualist/functionalist perspective embodied in a weak and loosely-structured Organization of African Unity (OAU) created on 25 May 1963 in Addis Ababa (Ethiopia). This article analyses the reasons for this failure, namely: the reluctance of newly-independent African leaders to abandon their newly-won sovereignty in favor of a broader political unity; suspicion on the part of many African leaders that Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana intended to become the super-president of a united Africa; and divide and rule strategies on the part of major Western powers (including the United States and France) meant to sabotage any attempt at African unity. The African Union which, on 26 May 2001, formally replaced the OAU, is also bound to fail because it is modeled on the European Union. The article then briefly surveys proposals for a re-configuration of the African states and a revision of the political map of Africa put forth by various authors, namely: Cheikh Anta Diop’s Federal African State; Marc-Louis Ropivia’s geopolitics of African regional integration; Makau wa Mutua’s and Arthur Gakwandi’s new political maps of Africa; Joseph Ki-Zerbo’s Federal African State; Daniel Osabu-Kle’s United States of Africa; Godfrey Mwakikagile’s African Federal Government; and Pelle Danabo’s pan-African Federal State. The article concludes with an overview of Mueni wa Muiu’s Fundi wa Afrika paradigm advocating the creation of a Federation of African States (FAS) based on five sub-regional states with a federal capital (Napata) and a rotating presidency, eventually leading to total political and economic integration.


1964 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 209-210 ◽  

The Council of Ministers of the Organization of African Unity (OAU), consisting of the foreign ministers of the member countries, met in Dakar, Senegal, on August 2–11, 1963, under the chairmanship of Mr. Doudou Thiam (Senegal) in pursuance of the decisions taken at the Addis Ababa Conference of African heads of state and government.


1963 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 989-991 ◽  

The Addis Ababa Conference of Independent African States was held on May 22–25, 1963, and was attended by the heads of state of 30 African countries. The Conference adopted six resolutions and a Charter to establish an organization to be known as the Organization of African Unity (OAU).


Author(s):  
Marina Sharpe

This book analyses the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa, including both refugee and human rights law as well as treaty and institutional elements. The regime is addressed in two parts. Part I analyses the relevant treaties: the 1951 Convention relating to the Status of Refugees, the 1969 Organization of African Unity Convention Governing the Specific Aspects of Refugee Problems in Africa, and the 1981 African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights. The latter two regional instruments are examined in depth. This includes the first fulsome account of the African Refugee Convention’s drafting, an interpretation of its unique refugee definition, and original analysis of the relationships between the three treaties. Significant attention is devoted to the systemic relationship between the international and the regional refugee treaties and to the discrete relationships of conflict and relationships of interpretation between the two refugee instruments, as well as to the relationships of conflict and of interpretation between the African Refugee Convention and African Charter. Part II focuses on the institutional architecture supporting the treaty framework. The Organization of African Unity is addressed in a historical sense, and the contemporary roles of the African Union, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, and the current and contemplated African human rights courts are examined. This book is the first devoted to the legal framework for refugee protection in Africa.


1965 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 243-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. O. Elias

Early in 1961, the President of Liberia, the Prime Minister of Nigeria, and the Prime Minister of Sierra Leone decided to act as joint sponsors of a conference of the leaders of all the independent African states for the purpose of promoting inter-African co-operation. Liberia, as the the oldest of the three sponsoring states, graciously offered to play host. The idea was that all the African states that were independent at that time were ipso facto eligible for membership of the conference. This conference would include the small group of independent African states, usually referred to as the Casablanca bloc, consisting of the United Arab Republic, Ghana, Guinea, Mali and Morocco. This group had signed the Casablanca Charter which was a brief document setting out the aims and purposes of the organization, among which were schemes of economic and social co-operation and the establishment of an African High Command for the purpose of self-defense of its members as well as for that of ridding the continent of Africa of all forms of colonialism. When, therefore, the decision was taken by the three sponsoring states to call a Pan-African conference, it was envisaged that all the then independent states in Africa, including the so-called Casablanca bloc states, would attend and take a full part in its deliberations.


1981 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 15-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nicholson

Among the school of scholars of international relations, neatly called by Roy Jones the ‘English School’, the work of Martin Wight is placed in particularly high esteem. More perhaps than anyone else, he is regarded as the scholar who did international relations as it ought to be done. I suppose no one would assert that this form is exclusive and needed no complement. The need for the discussion of economic factors in international relations for example would presumably not be denied, nor that such a discussion might not need other methods. What I take to be asserted, however, is that the sort of problem which Wight faced is central to international relations (and given the generality of some of these problems, for some issues, at least, this would not be widely denied) but more importantly that the way he tackled them is the right way.


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