Overview
- Explains the history and evolution of Australia’s engagement with African states, outlining what Australia is pursuing and wants to achieve in Africa
- Draws on interviews with high-level sources – Australian politicians and top diplomats
Part of the book series: Africa's Global Engagement: Perspectives from Emerging Countries (AGEG)
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Table of contents (6 chapters)
Keywords
About this book
This book offers analysis of Australia’s engagement with Africa, as well as the country’s rather unique status as a ‘new’ actor and emerging country in Africa. With its empirical originality and comparative contribution, the book fills a gap in both the study of Africa’s global engagement with emerging countries, and in connection with Australia’s largely unknown engagement with African states.
Australia has presented itself as Africa’s ‘friend from the south,’ without any colonial baggage, and is interested in a long-term partnership for trade and development. In this context, Australia is only one of many ‘new’ players seeking more intensive engagement with Africa since the end of the Cold War. At its core, the book argues that because of its largely unacknowledged ‘flawed’ historical engagement with Africa, as well as the political partisanship driving its fickle and volatile contemporary engagement with the continent, Australia suffers from an inability to assess its strategic and long-term interests – i.e., it doesn’t know what it wants in or from Africa. This makes Australia a rather unique emerging player in Africa: while other 'new' actors' engagement with Africa is generally strategic, and driven to a large extent by a desire to secure resources and counter the influence of geopolitical rivals, Australia’s efforts with regard to Africa are more episodic and not about acquiring resources or countering its rivals. Hence, while immigration, globalization, trade, terrorism, and climate change continue to bring Africa and Australia closer together, Australia’s failure to understand its own interests continues to hamper its engagement with Africa.Reviews
“A comprehensive examination of Australia’s ambivalent and inconsistent engagement with sub-Saharan Africa, this book makes an important contribution to the scholarship on Australia’s foreign relations. Provocative and carefully argued, it looks at Australia-Africa relations from the inside and outside. It examines the drivers, inhibitors and prejudices that have shaped Australia’s approach to the continent; as well as comparing the results of Australia’s record with those of other new engagers with Africa.” (Professor Michael Wesley, Dean, College of Asia and the Pacific, Australian National University)
Authors and Affiliations
About the author
Dr Nikola Pijović is a Research Fellow at the Africa Research and Engagement Centre (AfREC), University of Western Australia. He specializes in Australian foreign policy, and is a leading authority on Australia’s engagement with Africa, having published academic and media articles on Australia and Africa, as well as providing submissions to the Australian Parliament on the country’s relations with African states. Dr Pijović’s research also focuses on comparative foreign policy-making in two-party political systems, and especially the distinctions between ‘core’ and ‘peripheral’ foreign policy. He has also published extensively on statehood, insurgency, and terrorism in Somalia and Somaliland.
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Australia and Africa
Book Subtitle: A New Friend from the South?
Authors: Nikola Pijović
Series Title: Africa's Global Engagement: Perspectives from Emerging Countries
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-3423-8
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan Singapore
eBook Packages: Political Science and International Studies, Political Science and International Studies (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd., part of Springer Nature 2019
Hardcover ISBN: 978-981-13-3422-1Published: 05 February 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-981-13-3423-8Published: 28 January 2019
Series ISSN: 2662-7825
Series E-ISSN: 2662-7833
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XIX, 187
Number of Illustrations: 8 b/w illustrations
Topics: African Politics, Foreign Policy, International Political Economy, Asian Politics