With recent high-level visits to Africa by the foreign ministers of Russia and the United States – Sergey Lavrov and Antony Blinken – it is critical that the continent define its own vision of a post-Ukraine world.
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Buhari and US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken
The gods of Africa are angry. Kenyan intellectual, Ali Mazrui, enunciated the concept of Pax Africana in 1967, arguing that Africans must create, cultivate, and keep peace on their own continent. His related principle of “continental jurisdiction” urged outsiders to keep out of African conflicts and allow Africans to resolve disputes themselves, free of the meddling of external powers. It is these sacred injunctions that Nigerian president, Muhammadu Buhari, recently violated when he reportedly asked the United States (U.S.) Africa Command (AFRICOM) to relocate its headquarters from Stuttgart to Africa in order to provide security on the continent.
A brief history of American-led security initiatives in Africa is important. Under the presidency of Bill Clinton, Washington devised an African Crisis Response Initiative in 1996 after disasters in Somalia and Rwanda. The $20m programme was, however, derisory and mostly trained a few US-allied armies. Two of Africa’s most respected leaders, former president Nelson Mandela and Tanzania’s Julius Nyerere, rejected the initiative on the basis that Africans had not been consulted in its formulation and the plan had also not included a role for the UN.
The establishment in 2002 by the truculent George W Bush administration of a US military base and 1,500-strong Horn of Africa command in Djibouti to track terrorists in the region mirrored Washington’s support of autocratic governments in Kenya, Somalia and Sudan during the Cold War. In 2003, Bush launched the East Africa Counterterrorism Initiative to train and equip regional armies.
ADEKEYE ADEBAJO | Muhammadu vs Ali: Buhari’s plea to US flies in the face of Pax Africana The Nigerian leader’s call for the US to come to Africa to save it from itself suggests a desperate, rudderless elite 09 May 2021 - 18:51
THE INVISIBLE MAN Nigeria s president Muhammadu Buhari participates in a virtual bilateral meeting with US secretary of state Antony Blinken in April. Image: Leah Millis/Pool/Reuters
The gods of Africa are angry. Kenyan intellectual Ali Mazrui enunciated the concept of Pax Africana in 1967, arguing that Africans must create, cultivate and keep peace on their own continent. His related principle of “continental jurisdiction” urged outsiders to keep out of African conflicts.