This book explores, at a time when several powers have become serious players on the continent, aspects of African agency, past and present, by African writers on foreign policy, representative of geography, language and state size. In the past, African foreign policy has largely been considered within the context of reactions to the international or global "external factor". This groundbreaking book, however, looks at how foreign policy has been crafted and used in response not just to external, but also, mainly, domestic imperatives or (theoretical) signifiers. As such, it narrates individual and changing foreign policy orientations over time-and as far back as independence-with mainly African-based scholars who present their own constructs of what is a useful theoretical narrative regarding foreign policy on the continent-how theory is adapted to local circumstance or substituted for continentally based ontologies. The book therefore contends that the African experience carries valuable import for expanding general understandings of foreign policy in general. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Foreign Policy Analysis, Foreign Policy Studies, African International Relations/Politics/Studies, Diplomacy and more broadly to International Relations.

Recent scholarship in International Relations (IR) has started to study the meaning and implications of a non-Western world. With this comes the need for a new paradigm of IR theory that is more global, open, inclusive, and able to capture the voices and experiences of both Western and non-Western worlds. This book investigates why Africa has been marginalised in IR discipline and theory and how this issue can be addressed in the context of the emerging Global IR paradigm. To have relevance for Africa, a new IR theory needs to be more inclusive, intellectually negotiated and holistically steeped in the African context. In this innovative volume, each author takes a critical look at existing IR paradigms and offers a unique perspective based on the African experience. Following on from Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan's work, Non-Western International Relations Theory, it develops and advances non-Western IR theory and the idea of Global IR. This volume will be of key interest to scholars and students of African politics, international relations, IR theory and comparative politics.

This book explores, at a time when several powers have become serious players on the continent, aspects of African agency, past and present, by African writers on foreign policy, representative of geography, language and state size. In the past, African foreign policy has largely been considered within the context of reactions to the international or global "external factor". This groundbreaking book, however, looks at how foreign policy has been crafted and used in response not just to external, but also, mainly, domestic imperatives or (theoretical) signifiers. As such, it narrates individual and changing foreign policy orientations over time-and as far back as independence-with mainly African-based scholars who present their own constructs of what is a useful theoretical narrative regarding foreign policy on the continent-how theory is adapted to local circumstance or substituted for continentally based ontologies. The book therefore contends that the African experience carries valuable import for expanding general understandings of foreign policy in general. This book will be of key interest to scholars and students of Foreign Policy Analysis, Foreign Policy Studies, African International Relations/Politics/Studies, Diplomacy and more broadly to International Relations.

Recent scholarship in International Relations (IR) has started to study the meaning and implications of a non-Western world. With this comes the need for a new paradigm of IR theory that is more global, open, inclusive, and able to capture the voices and experiences of both Western and non-Western worlds. This book investigates why Africa has been marginalised in IR discipline and theory and how this issue can be addressed in the context of the emerging Global IR paradigm. To have relevance for Africa, a new IR theory needs to be more inclusive, intellectually negotiated and holistically steeped in the African context. In this innovative volume, each author takes a critical look at existing IR paradigms and offers a unique perspective based on the African experience. Following on from Amitav Acharya and Barry Buzan's work, Non-Western International Relations Theory, it develops and advances non-Western IR theory and the idea of Global IR. This volume will be of key interest to scholars and students of African politics, international relations, IR theory and comparative politics.