Assessing Africa’s Agency in International Relations: A Comparative Analysis of African States’ Participation in Global Governance
African Centre for Digital Transformation, Ghana · University of Yaoundé I, Cameroon
Abstract
Africa's relationship with the international system has long been characterised by
tension between formal membership in global institutions and substantive
marginalisation within them. This paper assesses Africa's agency in international
relations through a comparative analysis of three continental powers — Egypt,
Nigeria, and South Africa — focusing on their participation and influence in
multilateral governance institutions including the United Nations (UN), the African
Union (AU), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), the
World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and
the BRICS grouping. Employing a mixed-methods framework that integrates
comparative case study analysis with institutional theory, the study argues that
African agency is neither uniformly absent nor consistently realised, but rather
selectively exercised through context-dependent strategies of coalition building,
South-South cooperation, and regional institutional entrepreneurship. The paper
identifies a persistent structural tension between the formal commitments of
African states to multilateral norms and the material, institutional, and normative
constraints imposed by an international order historically designed without African
interests at its centre. The findings carry implications for how global governance
theory accounts for agency in structurally disadvantaged contexts, and for how
African foreign policy strategies might be calibrated to generate more durable
influence in multilateral settings.
Keywords
How to Cite
Calistus Abang, Divine Ngwa Nchotu. (2026). Assessing Africa’s Agency in International Relations: A Comparative Analysis of African States’ Participation in Global Governance. The Rest: Journal of Politics and Development, 16(2), 287–301.
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