Description
How should we write about “Africa” in International Relations? The appropriate way to represent and write about the African continent has given birth to satirical interjections such as Binyavanga Wainaina’s “How to write about Africa” and the online publication, “Africa is a Country”. Both examples highlight the tendency to treat Africa as a singular entity and erase the heterogeneity and agency of its various states and actors. When it is appropriate to refer to a position as “African” and when does this minimise the diversity of opinions? When is it accurate to see foreign policy behaviours as influenced by regional collective decision-making and when do presentations of policy positions as shared obscure the truth? Using the debate about collective African withdrawal from the International Criminal Court (ICC) – which spanned 2008 to 2017 – as a case, this paper demonstrates the limitations of referring to an “African” position regarding the ICC. It shows that understanding African states’ relations with the ICC on a case-by-case basis is an important way to identify the dynamic behaviour toward the Court within and across states. It also shows how foreign policy decisions are influenced by various factors. Collective positions certainly are a feature of the region, but indiscriminately asserting uniformity reproduces reductionist epistemologies about the continent. It is therefore imperative to assume heterogeneity as a point of departure and justify claims about singular “African” position.
