Leadership-as-Process and International Relations: Re-examining Agency within China-Africa Relations

Abstract

This article argues for a re-examination of China’s engagement with Africa from a leadership perspective. A leadership-as-process framework of analysis recognises leadership as an interactive, dynamic process and better explains the multi-levelled, multi-dimensional nature of agency within global affairs. The work is based on over three years of desktop research and 117 field work interviews conducted in East Africa with local academics, journalists, economists, Chinese businessmen, East African Community experts and officials, NGO workers, subject area specialists, ruling party and opposition politicians, Government Minister’s, Military officers, civil society groups and local market traders. The paper asks how do leadership processes affect African agency within China-Africa relations? And how are African state building and regional integration efforts effected therein? Through a case study of East Africa, it highlights how President Museveni of Uganda manipulated mutuality between partners of a regional initiative and incorporated China into his regional manoeuvrings. President Museveni exemplifies how leadership processes occur across the levels and boundaries that most International Relations theorists take as standard tools of analysis. Museveni demonstrates how individuals can assert influence over domestic constituencies, global powers and regional actors (amongst others), thus appearing as an outstanding example of African agency; albeit one that has failed to enact meaningful, transformative change. China would benefit from a more sophisticated understanding of African leadership, in order to better engage the (problematic) social contracts between citizen and state in Africa and remain a valued foreign partner of first choice.