Description
The regional nuclear ordering terrain in Africa is increasingly complex, with proliferating and deepening institutional relationships to the institutions of the global nuclear order. We were asked to apply a ‘complexity lens’ to Africa’s contribution to global nuclear ordering, with particular attention to civil nuclear power. However, one important concern when thinking about complex multinational regimes is depoliticisation. Through a study of the ‘meso’-level African civil nuclear institutions AFRA, AFCONE, and the FNRBA, we examined the ‘complexity’ of African nuclear ordering agency around the pursuit of civilian nuclear technology. However, we found that the complexity lens perpetuates depoliticisation when it does not acknowledge the political thrusts which underlie conceptions of ‘order’ and ‘disorder’. Specifically, it obscures how historically radical African nuclear ordering activities are channelled by complex and nested institutions into the preservation of the global nuclear status quo.
