Indonesia’s African Foreign Policy Shift under President Jokowi

Abstract

Under President Jokowi’s leadership, Indonesia seems to have made Africa a foreign policy priority. Previously bounded by Bandung romanticism and lacking understanding on the contemporary strategic importance of Africa, Indonesia finally launched its own Africa+1 forum in April 2018 in Bali, the Indonesia Africa Forum (IAF), following an economic diplomacy framework and will to do business with Africa. For Jokowi, Bandung should be leveraged to mean business. Indonesia had previously struggled to institutionalize Asia-Africa intercontinental multilateralism through the New Africa-Asia Strategic Partnership (NAASP) launched during the 2005 Asia Africa Summit in Jakarta organized to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Bandung Conference; while other major Asian powers such as Japan, China, Malaysia, India or South Korea developed their own political, economic and cultural platforms with African countries. Closing a clear research gap, this original study allows a better comprehension of this foreign policy shift and of Indonesia's contemporary foreign policy towards Africa within Global Africa Studies. For more pragmatism and flexibility, this qualitative research, notably based on in-depth interviews with Indonesian and African diplomats, uses an eclectic analysis allowing a holistic approach combining levels of analysis and types of factors; thus increasing explanatory power.