This explorative study uses Ghana as a test case to critique the post-Cold War foreign policy of the United States of America (hereafter referred to as the US) towards West Africa. It does this by contemporaneously locating the US relationship with Ghana within a historical and regional context. History is crucial in this regard, because the past provides a sound basis for understanding the present and the future. To add, in International Politics, theory holds sway and history is used as a laboratory. In this article, the researchers propose Afrocentricity as an alternative theoretical paradigm crucial in understanding US foreign policy towards Africa in general. As shall be seen, such a paradigm remains critical in highlighting the peculiarity of the US relationship with Ghana. It is envisaged that a deeper understanding of the US foreign policy towards Ghana is achievable when its analysis and interpretation is located within a broader regional (West Africa) and continental (Africa) context. The two central questions that are grappled with in this article are: (i) Why does the US view Ghana as an indispensable political ally in West Africa? (ii) To what extent did Barack Obama's presidency alter the US's foreign policy towards Ghana, West Africa and Africa? To realise the purpose of this study, the researchers rely methodologically on interdisciplinary critical discourse and conversations in their widest form. The critical analysis for this article concludes that the agenda for democratic consolidation and access to oil resources feature as the key drivers of the US foreign policy towards Ghana and West Africa at large. While the US's role in the democratisation of Ghana and other African states is observable, it can be argued that this principle has been merely used as a tool for international morality to justify American imperialism. Oil in West Africa's Ghana is important for the US, both as an economic resource and a strategic energy source during wartime periods. Overall, the "differential" foreign policy towards individual African states is also a significant observation, which dispels the myth of a universal US foreign policy framework.
Since March 2016, the subject of South African state capture has received much attention from the political, business and scholarly community in the country and beyond. The vibrancy of this public and scholarly discourse was reignited by the claims by some politicians from the ruling party, the African National Congress (ANC), that in the recent past, they were approached by the Gupta family (business moguls) for consideration in ministerial appointments. These revelations have since produced a dominant perception that the Gupta family wields an undue influence over the President of the Republic and by extension, the entire state machinery. This extends to the family and friends as well. While the Guptas 'capture' the state, ministers and premiers are not directly accountable to them by protocol, but only to the President as a constitutional prerogative to do so. The view on state capture is not uniformly accepted. One notes the discourse is dominated by Euro-American perspectives, purporting to create a misunderstanding of the current trajectory of business-state relations in South Africa. As a theoretical framework, Afrocentricity is adopted and used in this article to answer the following two central questions: (i) Is it a myth or reality that the Gupta family has captured the South African state? (ii) At which point should corporate influence in state affairs be considered as illegal? Methodologically, this is achieved through thematic content analysis on conversations and the prevailing discourses circulating within South Africa. ArticleInsight on Africa 9(1) 62-75
On the basis of the Afrocentric perspective, this article uses South Africa as a test case to critique Mokoko Piet Sebola's piece titled “Peer review, scholarship and editors of scientific publications: the death of scientific knowledge in Africa,” which appeared in Koers ‐ Bulletin for Christian Scholarship, Volume 83 (1): 1–13. I argue that Sebola's piece provides a partial guide to understanding the state of the knowledge industry in Africa, particularly in South Africa. Safe to say that Sebola's work deepens scholarly and public discourse on the politics of scholarship in Africa and the world at large. However, I do not intend to blatantly praise Sebola's contribution to this academic area, which remains under researched due to the reasons that are beyond the scope of this article. In particular, the current article aspires to identify scholarly weaknesses in Sebola's work with a view to correcting them by offering an alternative view. This correction deserves the attention of all scholars and practitioners especially because it is interdisciplinary in nature, and it is poised to undo the misinformation disseminated in Sebola's piece. Such misinformation has a potential to overshadow the few truths advanced in his article. Methodologically, this article is based on document review, conversations, and interdisciplinary discourse analysis in its broadest form.
In this article, the author uses Afrocentricity in order to provide an African point of view in respect of the analysis of the United States (US) foreign policy towards Africa. Given the dominance of mainstream thinking about the US foreign policy that takes for granted US as a prominent and primary in defining the relations, this article employs historical sensibility in order to trace the US relationship with Ghana and Tanzania using Afrocentric lens. This discourse is often partially understood due to the lack of an Afrocentric perspective on the existing literature in this aspect of Strategic Studies. History is crucial in this regard because the past provides a sound basis for understanding the present and future. This helps challenge the thinking overly informed by mainstream theories in Strategic Studies. As it shall be seen below, such a paradigm remains critical in highlighting the peculiarity of the US relationship with Ghana and Tanzania and in providing a deeper understanding of underlying dynamics in US foreign policy towards Africa. To realise the purpose of this article, the author relies methodologically on interdisciplinary critical discourse and conversations in their widest forms.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.