Supporting Sovereignty in Africa

Abstract

The search for an ideal foreign policy toward Africa necessitates at least a brief look at Africa's present-day situation. We must start by acknowledging that, contrary to the Washington rhetoric of the late 1990s, Africa is not experiencing a renaissance. Such a political, social, and economic revival will not be possible unless a number of conditions change. A series of developments in the 1990s have dangerously weakened the African state system and undermined the basic African consensus on the sources of legitimacy of both the state and the region's boundaries. While I am not wedded to any specific state's independence or any specific set of national frontiers, Africa cannot simply be subjected to a new "law of the jungle." It matters how African conflicts are resolved. If these issues are now to be resolved by means of the gun, then the continent's prospects are grim.