Towards Africa's model in a polylateral world

Abstract

The first part of the book, on preconditions for Africa’s participation in the multilateral world of modernities, begins with this chapter. It offers an explanation of the main preconditions surrounding the topic of the book, which are based on social and political philosophy and developed in global studies. This chapter focuses on chronological and then territorial aspects of the analysis in order to formulate a model of political and economic organisation in Africa in its global interactions. First, it distinguishes between the historical phases of African advancement in a global context, from independence to the present day. This differentiation is relevant because it helps to overcome colonial remnants and other forms of injustice (exploitation, oppression, racism, etc.), or to mitigate them, by identifying their characteristics in specific epochs and related foreign major countries. The historical eras of the bipolar world of the Cold War, unilateralism, rising multilateralism with the greater participation of Africa and other parts of the world, and emerging polylateralism are distinct periods of time which, however, partially overlap because the decline of the previous eras does not mean their total dismantling, but the partial survival of their characteristics in today’s global capitalism. This chapter also deals with the relations of African countries, and the whole of Africa, with influential macro-regions of the world within a plurality of modernities. This encompasses, in particular, interactions with the contemporary major powers of the EU, the US and Russia. It pays attention to relations between Africa and China, which have recently represented a new way of major interactions for African countries, focusing on development mainly by the building of infrastructure. The chapter ends by stressing the importance of the emerging tendencies of Africa’s developing model, based on internal sources and inspired by other parts of the world within the framework of a polylateral global arrangement. This reveals new cosmopolitan possibilities.