序章　二一世紀アフリカにおける国家と国際関係

抄録

The changing international order and great upsurge of foreign interest in Africa have significantly altered the continent’s political and economic landscape. Africa has become the terrain for global competition between the United States, Europe, and China, with new external players including India and Russia. There is an emerging consensus in the United States and Europe that the presence of China and Russia in Africa challenges Western political, economic, and security interests. However, these perceptions ignore the fact that various African states are not helpless “pawns” or victims of great power competition, with many ruling elites in Africa attempting to make use of this external environment to gain and consolidate power.

This introductory chapter considers four crucial political issues within the scope of conceptions regarding Africa’s “agency” and “extraversion.” The first section of this chapter investigates the problems of “state-building” and “national integration” in Africa. Several case studies, such as those of Liberia and Nigeria, illustrate the structural constraints and limited options for enhancing state-building in Africa that are the result of historical, political, and economic factors. The UN and other international actors have been assisting African countries in state-building as part of post-conflict international peacekeeping operations in Africa since the 1990s. The section also articulates why most of these operations fail to secure peace and political stability by closely examining the actions of the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS).

Despite the diversity and differences of political and economic situations in Africa, a broad trend of “democratic backsliding” has been seen in various African states since the mid-2000s. Thus, section two investigates the impact of external actors on the transformation of political regimes and legal institutions. Also since the mid-2000s, Africa has experienced a substantial increase in the number of internal conflicts and acts of terrorism. One crucial phenomenon behind this increase is the lack of compliance with peace agreements between conflicting parties, with 90% of the current internal conflicts in Africa being recurrences of earlier internal conflicts. Section three, therefore, focuses on conflict resolution and international peace-building in Africa and articulates the problems and structural constraints involved in the currently used approaches.

Section four of this chapter provides an overview of the contemporary relationship between Africa, Russia, and China. It also illustrates that African states have made adjustments to the changing nature of Africa’s regional order while attempting to utilize the current political situations in desirable ways. Ultimately, Africa’s international relations will be subject to the choices of African states, not to those of external powers.