AFRICA’S LETHARGIC FOREIGN RELATIONS: UNDERSTANDING THE DIMINISHING VOICES OF AFRICAN LEADERS AT THE GLOBAL STAGE

Abstract

African leadership has over the years suffered a bitter loss of its prestige and influence at the global stage because of sundry problems buffeting the continent and its people. But, the diminishing clout of African leaders could be traced to their own miscalculations about the roles expected of their countries in the global system where politics and economics have significant roles to play in the assessment of the status of states as actors at that level of diplomatic engagement. From the 1960s when so many African countries earned their political independence from their erstwhile colonizers, the high rating of the continent peaked then but began to fall precipitously with the end of the cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union as from the 1990s. African leaders of newly independent States also had problems managing the post-independence challenges in their countries. That means that the assertiveness of African leaders at the global stage and the vibrancy of their countries’ foreign relations in the early post-independent years suddenly began to dwindle. This commentary on the diminishing voices of African leaders at the global arena is an exegetical analysis that attempts to provide some explanations for this observed trend and raises some key issues whilst proposing remedial actions.