2 - African Agency in Afro-Asian Internationalism

Presentation Abstract
There has been noteworthy intensification in economic engagements between Africa and Asia over the past decades. Growing levels of trade, investment and inter-regional migration have knit together these disparate regions, with complex political and developmental outflows. In the current era of hyper-globalisation, furthermore, relations between Africa and Asia are distinctive, driven in large part by the one-way flow of Asian capital to Africa. In recent years, moreover, regional dynamics in Asia have tended to spark a new (Asian) geopolitics towards the African continent.
This paper reflects critically on the role of the Afro-Asia imaginary in the past and present of Africa-Asia relations, and it does so from an African perspective. The Cold War-era – and specifically Bandung - construction of Afro-Asianism as an expression of anti-imperialism, Third World solidarism and non-alignment held within it promises of mutuality and reciprocity. Yet Afro-Asia has been contested throughout history and it has been instrumentalised for exclusionary nationalist purposes that negated the Bandung spirit. And when taking stock of economic ties between Africa and Asia today, there is clear asymmetry in these ties. The paper has two purposes: first, to discuss the Afro-Asia imaginary as a distinctive case of non-Western agency with historical and contemporary significance in world politics. Second, it is to show the complex power relations embedded in this imaginary and the way African states have negotiated this. Drawing on cases in the development sector, the discussion aims to highlight African political agency in the engagement with Asian actors and capital.