This episode explores political and military conflicts in Ethiopia and more broadly, in the Horn of Africa. Why has Ethiopia’s process of democratization eroded in recent years? And what is the wider impact of such democratic backsliding on African regional politics? Listen to hear how shifting global geopolitical balances are shaping the opportunity structures of democratization in Africa today.
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Glossary
Tigray War
(03:21 or p.1 in the transcript)
Between 2020 and 2022, Ethiopia fought a war with militants from its northernmost region of Tigray, then under the control of the Tigrayan People’s Liberation Front (TPLF). The conflict was one of the deadliest in recent world history and drew international attention for a preponderance of alleged war crimes, human rights abuses, and ethnic cleansing in Tigray. The war formally ended in November 2022; Tigray was left in ruins, and its capital was turned over to the federal government. Due to the conflict, 5.1 million Ethiopians became internally displaced in 2021 alone, a record for the most people internally displaced in any country in any single year at the time. Thousands also fled to Sudan and other countries in the region. By the time the Pretoria peace agreement took effect, the Tigray War and its associated humanitarian disaster had killed approximately 600,000 people. In late 2022, humanitarian groups were permitted to meaningfully operate in Tigray for the first time since November 2020. source
African Union
(11:37 or p.4 in the transcript)
African Union (AU), intergovernmental organization, was established in 2002, to promote unity and solidarity of African states, to spur economic development, and to promote international cooperation. The African Union (AU) replaced the Organization of African Unity (OAU). The AU’s headquarters are in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The OAU was established on May 25, 1963, and its activities included diplomacy (especially in support of African liberation movements), mediation of boundary conflicts and regional and civil wars, and research in economics and communications. The OAU maintained the “Africa group” at the United Nations (UN) through which many of its efforts at international coordination were channeled. The OAU was instrumental in bringing about the joint cooperation of African states in the work of the Group of 77, which acts as a caucus of developing nations within the UN Conference on Trade and Development. In 2000, in a move spearheaded by Libyan leader Colonel Muammar al-Qaddafi, it was proposed that the OAU be replaced by a new body, the African Union. The African Union was to be more economic in nature, similar to the European Union, and would contain a central bank, a court of justice, and an all-Africa parliament. A Constitutive Act, which provided for the establishment of the African Union, was ratified by two-thirds of the OAU’s members and came into force on May 26, 2001. After a transition period, the African Union replaced the OAU in July 2002. In 2004 the AU’s Pan-African Parliament was inaugurated, and the organization agreed to create a peacekeeping force, the African Standby Force, of about 15,000 soldiers. source
Shalini Randeria (SR): Welcome to a new episode of Democracy in Question, the podcast series that explores the challenges democracies are facing around the world. I'm Shalini Randeria, the Rector and President of Central European University in Vienna and Senior Fellow at the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the Graduate Institute in Geneva.
This is the sixth episode of season eight of Democracy in Question. I am really pleased to welcome today, Michael Woldemariam, Associate Professor in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland, College Park and Senior Fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies. Michael has held fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, as well as the African Research Center at Penn State University. In 2020-21, he served on the Democratic staff at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee through a fellowship from the Council on Foreign Relations. Michael’s main area of research is African security studies, with a geographical focus on the Horn of Africa, on the politics and security of which he also consults with many international organizations. He has published widely in academic journals, like “Contemporary Security Policy” and “Studies in Conflict and Terrorism” but also in more popular outlets such as “Foreign Affairs”, “Foreign Policy”. His book, “Insurgent Fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and Its Discontents”[i] was published by Cambridge University Press in 2018.
This is the first part of my extended conversation with Mike. In today’s episode, we focus first on political and military conflicts in Ethiopia and more generally, in the Horn of Africa. I ask him to explain why Ethiopia’s process of democratization in recent years has suddenly and rather unexpectedly reversed, sparking civil war and ethnic conflicts. What is the wider significance of this democratic backsliding in such large anchor states for African regional politics? Is democratic erosion in Ethiopia symptomatic of contemporary trends across the region? We also discuss the role of shifting global geopolitical balances in shaping the opportunity structures of democratization in Africa today. I then ask him to address both the determining impact of U.S. foreign policy and the growing influence of some other, less well-known state actors, such as certain Gulf states, which are pursuing their own strategic objectives in eastern and north-eastern Africa. In what ways do external forces influence the prospects of destabilizing local democratic structures and processes? And we also talk about the growing presence of Chinese interests in Africa, as well as the foreign policy predicament African governments face vis-à-vis Russia today.
Mike, welcome to the podcast, thank you very much for joining me today!
Michael Woldemariam (MW): Thank you. It's a pleasure to be with you.
SR: Let’s begin with Ethiopia's recent military and political upheavals. As your work shows, the civil war in the Tigray region between 2020 and 2022 encapsulates many of the ethnic and political tensions which have periodically erupted throughout the history of the modern Ethiopian state. Successive regimes from 1974 to 2019 and all the way to Abiy Ahmed's democratically elected government were plagued by, as you point out, conflict, civil war and civilian victimization, as you call it. Could you outline the general context of this reversal from the relative stability of an earlier era, which was quite anti-liberal and yet was not as chaotic as the more recent years, especially of the Abiy regime, which was initially celebrated in the West as the guarantor of democracy, of economic liberalization and general political normalization? What are the roots of today's political divisions and democratic recession?
MW: Great, Shalini. That's a sweeping and quite challenging question. I think to understand the roots of the current crisis in Ethiopia, you have to go back to the formation of the modern Ethiopian state in the late 19th century under a succession of monarchs. And that was, in large measure, a coercive project that involved the expansion of the Ethiopian monarchy in the central Ethiopian highlands, particularly under a set of monarchs from the Tigray and Amhara regions into what is now the Ethiopian periphery, eventually into Eritrea and the north, into the Somali-speaking regions of the west. And so, that process of coercive expansion, obviously, produced historic discontent amongst what you might call Ethiopia's peripheral peoples. And, of course, it left an Ethiopian state, such as it emerged in the late 19th century and early 20th century, as a state that had a very strong kind of central highland orthodox Christian accent, so to speak. It was dominated by communities from Ethiopia's central highlands, particularly the Amhara and the Tigrayan elites from those particular regions.
And so, that is, I think, a critical backdrop to understanding Ethiopian history. It explains a lot of the kind of ethnic politics and ethnic fissures that matter in Ethiopia today. Now, fast forward to the early 1990s, where after the decline or the demise of the Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam, you saw a new dispensation emerge under the EPRDF, the Ethiopian People's Revolutionary Democratic Front. At the center of that political party was an organization called the TPLF, the Tigray People's Liberation Front, kind of Marxist-oriented liberation movement that had ousted the old regime through force. And the TPLF/EPRDF led Ethiopia through very authoritarian means, as you noted. I mean, it was a high-capacity state, but repressive, nonetheless.
And essentially, what happened as we moved to around 2015, 2016, 2017 is that that authoritarian dispensation begins to break down for a variety of reasons. There were internal party fissures. There were also dramatic accumulating over decades, socioeconomic changes that laid the basis for a kind of revolutionary discontent. Urbanization, a growing youth demographic, and so on that leads to the breakdown of the old authoritarian dispensation. finally, in 2018, the entry of a new kind of reformist figure named Abiy Ahmed from the ruling party itself, from the Oromo wing of the ruling party. The Oromo being a group, historically, I would say, that's been somewhat disenfranchised in the Ethiopian political sphere.
And here, I'm painting in very broad strokes after giving you a bit of history. I think the challenge in Ethiopia today, though, is you had an old authoritarian dispensation, a breakdown, and there was no real roadmap or political settlement on what the new Ethiopia might look like, right? How historic tensions, often along ethnic lines, could be reconciled into a new kind of political arrangement. And so, continued rivalry, conflict, and the explosion of violence in Tigray, I think, was a symptom of that. But there are other conflicts in Ethiopia as well, an ongoing rebellion in the Amhara region, conflicts in the Oromo region of Ethiopia, and so on. So, I guess, to summarize, this is really about the breakdown of an old authoritarian experiment that had its own inequities and the inability to get to a new political settlement that could reconcile some of these historic differences.
SR: But what exactly led to so much discontent and the breakdown of the Abiy Ahmed regime? It was a democratically elected government, and a lot of hope, I think, both domestically and abroad, was placed in the kind of liberalization, economic and political liberalism, which it was at least supposed to bring to the fore. What happened there, which led to the current reversal and violence?
MW: I think it certainly is the case that early on in Abiy's tenure, there weredimensions of his governing style that pointed to liberal democratic reforms.And we could point to a number of early moves that he makes. One, of course, is the release of thousands of political prisoners, the return of formerly exiled political parties, the expansion of space for free media, so an explosion of all of these kind of different media networks that are now able to report in a pretty frank sense about developments in the country. So, that is, I think, all true. But I think over time, the sort of democratic credentials of the government and its commitment to actual genuine democratic transformation became weaker.And I think there are a few different reasons for that, particularly the issue of the elections that you had mentioned a moment ago.
Certainly, elections were held, people voted, but the ruling party won in excess of 90 percent of parliamentary seats in that election. And the most formidable opposition parties chose not to participate in that particular election. I think in part what Abiy was trying to do in terms of opening up political space was to destabilize and unseat the old system because there was adeep state, EPRDF deep state that was still quite politically powerful, that controlled still the commanding heights of the economy, key institutions within the state, the military, the intelligence, the foreign policy bureaucracy. And by opening up political space, building political support with the population writ large, I think he was trying to unseat or sort of destabilize that old autocratic elite, and he was successful. But on the question of building something new, in which he would have to then open up space to real challenges to his power, I think the commitment at that stage was not as clear.
And so, I think what you've seen, particularly after the first year of Abiy's rise, is a sort of consolidation of power in the office of the prime minister and some increasing personalization of power by the prime minister. Now, to be fair, it's not all about the prime minister himself. It's not as if many of his opponents have real democratic credentials themselves.And, of course, Ethiopia is a country that, prior to Abiy, I mean, has no historyof democratic politics, right? Certainly, not under the EPRDF, not under the Derg, not under the monarchy.
I've talked about theaccumulated weight of history and long-running ethnic conflicts. Conflict does break out after 2018, after Abiy comes to power andthe governing politics of national security take over and the government is in survival mode, trying to suppress various rebellions that are attempting in part to unseat the government. And so, the space for democratic politics in that context is also constrained. We could also go in at some length about the external politics of some of this.I've written about this with a co-author, Harry Verhoeven, the way in which Abiy's government got very strong support from much of the international community. The West, in particular, Gulf states like the UAE that really allowed the prime minister to consolidate power in his hands. And at a certain point, I think that became problematic as we begin to think about democratic transformation going forward.
SR: We'll come back to the external forces in a moment but let me ask you a larger question. What are the more general lessons to be drawn from the Ethiopian case because Ethiopia has long been regarded, along with, say, Egypt, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa, as a major regional anchor state in Africa? And these states have enjoyed the support and trust of smaller member states within the African Union and the regional economic communities, umbrella organizations. So, is the democratic backsliding that you've just shown for Ethiopia, is it symptomatic of the reversal of democratic transformations across Africa over the last few decades, or could anchor states still serve as models for their neighbors? Although one should really say Egypt, South Africa are all experiencing reversals of constitutionalism and liberal democracy, more or less.
MW: Good question. It's probably useful to do some brush-clearing around the concept of anchor state itself because that actually has a very specific meaning. I mean, “African anchor states” is language that comes from the George W. Bush administration. It's 2002 national defense strategy in which it talks of that strategy about its approach to Africa. And what it basically says is that there are select African countries, maybe four or five that deserve focused U.S. engagement in the context of the war on terror. They would be key partners by virtue of their size, relationship with the United States in the war on terrorism. And Ethiopia was one of those countries.
And from 2001 onwards, up until, I would say, 2018, 2019, the early Abiy period, certainly to the Tigray War, the United States, the West really treats Ethiopia as sort of a key counterterrorism partner, a country that would receive focused engagement and focused assistance, security and economic developmental from the West. In part, this was because next door to Ethiopia, Somalia, which because of al-Shabaab occupies a very important place in the West war on terror in Africa. And so, that's what we mean when people talk about Ethiopia as a historic anchor state, they mean it in those particular terms.
But beyond that, of course, Ethiopia's historic relationship with the West, that actually predates the war on terror, goes back to the imperial era and Haile Selassie. It certainly is the case that Ethiopia is an important African state, seen as an important African state by the African system more generally. It is the headquarters of the African Union. It is Africa's second most populous state by a large measure. It's Nigeria, then it's Ethiopia, then it's Egypt. Certainly, in the context of the Horn of Africa, the size of its economy, its population, it sort of dwarfs the rest of the region economically and demographically. The historic role it's played in the development of the Organization of African Unity and later the African Union. It's important, I think, for its historic commitment to pan-African causes. I think it is, for that reason, (an) important trendsetter. The only African country, well, next to Liberia, that's never been colonized.
I think what we've seen in Ethiopia, the erosion of democratic space after very positive signs early on after Abiy's rise in 2018, think is indicative of what we're seeing across the continent. Look next door in Sudan, another big African country, two coups over the last three years that eventually have led the country sliding into a devastating civil war that's displaced millions. We'll talk more about that. But if we look at Africa, say, over the last two decades, there have been something like 13 or 14 military coups across the continent. In the last three years, by my count, I think there's been something like seven or eight.
And so, we are seeing, after real democratic gains at the end of the Cold War, political liberalization really across much of the continent, we are beginning to see democratic erosion. There's variation here across different parts of the continent. A lot of what we're seeing right now in terms of democratic erosion has happened in the Sahel belt of Africa stretching into the Horn. But certainly, I think what's happened in Ethiopia is indicative or emblematic of things that we're seeing across the continent more broadly. And there is an element of diffusion going on here. What's happened in Ethiopia is not a coup, but when you look at coups specifically, there is an element of diffusion, where a successful coup in Mali provides a template for coup plotters in Niger, Burkina, etc.
This is, I think, consistent with earlier periods in history. If we look at Africa in the early post-colonial period in the 1960s and 1970s, you know, Africa nominally constitutionally bound democratic structures from the European metropole. I mean, nominally. And many of Africa's first post-independence leaders were elected leaders. And very quickly, things break down. And diffusion, I think, was a key part of this. Anti-democratic forces, coup plotterslearning the practice of unsettling and unseating democracy from what was happening next door in the continent more broadly.
SR: In a co-authored article, which is provocatively titled, "Who Lost Ethiopia?"[ii] you've argued that Ethiopia's, and I quote you here, “rapid transition from a seeming African success story to violent fragmentation may have been catalyzed by the regional policies of the United States, its most powerful foreign partner”. As you just pointed out, the U.S. saw Ethiopia as a linchpin of Western interests in the Horn of Africa, but their partnership seems to have soured on both sides after that. And you point here to two interesting, interrelated issues. One is what you referred to as strategic dilemmas of liberal hegemons in partnership with regimes that end up pursuing policies which directly contradict the hegemonic ideals of democracy and of human rights.
So, this is a well-known principal-agent problem which creates a moral hazard. From Pakistan, we are familiar with this pattern. Egypt would be a good case as well. And I'd like you to say something about that. But secondly, you point to something, which is a distinct trajectory of key actors in the ethnically and ideologically charged political field that you've just described in Africa, which Abiy cleverly exploited for a while, the new opportunity structures to further consolidate his personal grip on power. So, could you elaborate on this elective affinity, if I may call it that, between the geopolitical lure of the new Ethiopia, as you call it, for the United States and the personalization, and with it the concentration of power behind the rhetoric of democratic transition. And what this tells us more broadly about the consequences of American foreign policy and also its blind spots in Africa?
MW: Yeah, so these are complex questions. I think it's certainly the case, and you pointed to the example of Pakistan, the U.S.-Pakistan relationship at certain moments, the U.S.-Saudi relationship, one could point to. The relationship between the United States and Egypt is indicative of the tensions between at least official liberal democratic projects as espoused by the United States and the reality of the behavior and governance styles of these “preferred partners” in various parts of the world, various parts of the global South in particular. There's clearly a disconnect, a disjuncture, and it is fundamental, I think, to U.S. foreign policy. This was absolutely the case in Ethiopia historically. In the era in which the U.S.-Ethiopia ties were quite close, in the imperial era under Haile Selassie, but also during the EPRDF era. Ethiopia was a close partner of the United States, a close security partner during the imperial era. The common enemy was global communism. During the EPRDF, what brought the United States and Ethiopia together again was a war on terror.
And it was absolutely the case that although the United States and Ethiopia were partners, Ethiopia’s leadership in these periods were pursuing fairly anti-democratic governing approaches. There's no question about it. And the human rights abuses were perpetrated during these eras. This is when I think the contradictions between liberal hegemonic projects and the behavior of allies becomes most apparent. There was, clearly, a rigged election in 2005 in which subsequent to popular protest, particularly in the capital Addis Ababa against the government, there's a violent crackdown, and the United States acknowledges a crackdown, has some words for the Ethiopian government, suspends aid for a period of time. And a couple of years later, the relationship is totally normalized.But this is a pattern we see in many other contexts.
And so, really in the pursuit of broader strategic interests, I think the United States at various junctures has been able to get over and get beyond the kind of anti-liberal, anti-democratic approaches of allies, in this case, Ethiopia. The United States was always, I think, conscious and aware of this contradiction. It made them uncomfortable. It made its way into the halls of Congress. It was a difficult diplomatic issue. But when Abiy comes to power in 2018, and he takes on this liberal reform agenda, there was this idea that in Abiy for the first time in Ethiopia, all the good things could go together. Now, we had a strategic partner who was with us in the war on terror, who was with us against China, but at the same time was a liberal reformer, was democratic, etc.
And so, the kinds of trade-offs and uncomfortable bargains that we've had to make in Ethiopia, historically, that we've had to make in Egypt, that we're making with Museveni's Uganda, that's out the window here. This is the best of both worlds. I think that was a view of Abiy. And it does create a blind spot over time because as developments proceed and the situation (in) the country unravels and the government's policies appear to be increasingly less democratic, it becomes very difficult, I think, for U.S. policymakers to fully shift their frame and recognize that this is not necessarily the liberal reformer that we thought we were dealing with. And, of course, as is often the case, broader strategic interests began to override the actual commitment to serve democracy promotion in Ethiopia.
So, I think that's where we are. We could talk about U.S. policy during the Tigray War. I think at that point, the U.S. perspective and the Western perspective on Abiy's government begins to shift decisively. But look, Ethiopia is a big, important African country, will always be a big, important African country. And I think history has shown that the West will, as is the case of China, it's also the case of many Arab countries, that they will prioritize their strategic interests in Ethiopia over these broader governance questions.
SR: Let's go to the Arab states first, and then come to China and to Russia as well. If we are thinking in terms of the complex entanglements of various domestic political forces with powerful external partners, there came to be perceived in the Ethiopian case, a kind of contestation between Chinese and American interests. And we'll get to the growing influence of China and Russia in a moment. But let me first ask you to talk about some lesser well-known external actors, which have an increasing stake in Northeastern Africa in the Horn. I'm thinking of the wealthier Gulf states. So, who are the most important players, and what are their strategic objectives in this region? And could their presence be a source of further geopolitical instability and therefore a potential threat to democratic consolidation?
MW: Yeah. I think here, we have to note the increasing role and prominence of players from the Middle East, their role in the Horn of Africa and Northeast Africa more broadly. Egypt is clearly a place in which these countries, particularly from the Gulf, so Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the UAE, are making their presence felt. Turkey as well. Turkey is very influential in the Horn in countries like Somalia, for instance. And these countries have, unquestionably, particularly since 2014, I think the war in Yemen was an important turning point, have sought to expand their commercial and military footprint across the Red Sea and into the Horn of Africa, and across Northeast Africa more broadly.
And so, we could, for instance, point to the proliferation of military bases, defense agreements, the gobbling up of commercial stakes of African ports along the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden. So, for instance, the UAE has a commercial management contract for the Berber port in the de facto state of Somaliland, for example. Now, what is driving this increased engagement? I think part of it is a projection of rivalries amongst Middle Eastern states into the Horn of Africa and Northeast Africa more generally. So, obviously, the Red Sea, the Horn of Africa, just by reason of geography – geography is seen by many Middle Eastern states as it's near abroad, as its security buffer. And it is a place where they need to acquire or preserve their geopolitical stakes.
And so, the Iran-Saudi/UAE rivalry has played out in the Horn of Africa? And so, these countries are seeking allies and deploying military and commercial power in order to find allies. The rupture between Turkey and Qatar, on the one hand, and the UAE and Saudi Arabia after 2017, the Gulf crisis, has also played out in the Horn of Africa in important ways. Now, there's an interesting emerging rivalry itself between Saudi Arabia and the UAE that's playing out in the Horn. So, part of this is just a projection of rivalries within the Middle East into the Horn of Africa, where these countries are trying to find support and allies and clients.
The other piece is commercial and economic logics. Countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE are thinking about life after oil. And part of that is securing commercial opportunities in their near abroad. And the Horn of Africa is seen as – although perhaps you wouldn't be able to tell from all of the conflict proliferating around the region – is seen as a potential growth area, particularly because of Ethiopia and the size of the country, (it’s) seen as a real commercial opportunity. Now, this is, I think, for the most part, pretty damaging in terms of democratic trends across the continent, and particularly in the Horn of Africa, in part because it's fueled proxy wars, and in the context of conflict, democratic transformation is quite difficult. See Sudan. I mean, the Emirati role in Sudan and backing the rapid support forces has been quite fundamental to understanding the escalating conflict there. Egypt, of course, on the other side, is also backing the Sudanese armed forces and so on.
Very similar dynamics in terms of how it's playing out in Somalia, for instance, even Ethiopia. The Emirati has played a very decisive role in the war in northern Ethiopia and is still a very big security partner of Abiy. So, this kind of infusion of military and commercial interest is giving local actors across the Horn the ability to pursue military solutions instead of de-escalate their conflicts. And that's not a fertile ground, I think, for democratic transformation. It's also the case of, we're talking about in the Middle East, mostly illiberal states, and they obviously are not particularly keen or supportive or don't particularly care, I would say, about democratic transformation in the Horn. They may not actively try and thwart democratic transformation, but it's certainly not a priority point of engagement in terms of the relationship with actors throughout the Horn. Overall, I don't think their role has been particularly positive, but look, democratic backsliding across Africa, in the Horn is a complex issue. It's driven by many different factors. I think the role of Middle Eastern power is just one.
SR: Let's talk about the role of China because there's been a rapid expansion of Chinese presence in most of Africa, and many critics have cautioned against China's so-called debt trap diplomacy and its ambitions across the continent, not only commercial, but also political ambitions across the continent. There's no shortage of alarmist projections about the diffusion of China's non-democratic model of authoritarian capitalism. Or about the easy money that China provides to autocratic elites all over Africa. So, what role do you think will Chinese money play? Will it empower and prop up African autocracies? Can it effectively contribute to the improvement of local infrastructure and the provisioning of material welfare, or will it fuel more corruption through patronage chains? And do you think it'd be naive to dismiss concerns about the asymmetrical nature of Sino-African relationships as mired in new Cold War imaginaries? Because if we look at China's increasing presence, we also must take account of the fact that China's loans, funds to Africa have sharply decreased since a record peak of $28 billion in 2016 to less than $1 billion in 2022 per year.
MW: So, this is a hotly debated issue, in the realm of African politics, African affairs, subject of a lot of intellectual discussion. I'm not sure how much I can add. And a lot of this is filtered, particularly in the West, through our own geopolitical lens and geopolitical fears about the rise of China and so on. I think if we look at this from the perspective of African countries, I would say the role of China, its impact on democracy is mostly mixed. I'm not sure it's quite positive or negative at the end of the day when we look at the balance sheet. On the one hand, certainly, China as a development partner doesn't prioritize democracy and human rights in its engagement with African countries. I'm not sure it actively tries to suppress those agenda items, but it's not fundamental to its engagement with African countries.
At the same time, if we look at the long-run structural effects of Chinese economic and commercial engagement across Africa and the resulting rise in living standards, one could make the argument that this is a structural raw material from which democracy actually emerges, right? The rise of a middle class, higher levels of consumption, a more educated population to the degree in which Chinese finance, Chinese investment has helped undergird that, I think paradoxically may actually contribute to democratic transformation across Africa. So, I see the effects as being quite mixed, to be honest.
I do think the West, the United States, the Europeans are obviously more committed to democratic transformation across Africa, at least rhetorically, and rhetoric matters. But, if we're being perfectly candid, I think the case of Ethiopia illustrates it's not as if the West is particularly effective at democracy promotion across Africa. And again, to go back to our earlier conversation, there are far too many examples of strategic prerogatives outweighing principled engagement on democracy. I do think there is something to be said about the rhetorical, the symbolic commitment to democracy. That is a value. But if we just look at sort of at a material level, how this shakes out, I think the record of the West in terms of democracy promotion across Africa is not a great picture.
So now, you raise, I think, an interesting question around the kind of asymmetrical relationship between China and African countries. It is an issue in terms of the actual negotiation of economic arrangements. Like on so many other issues, perhaps save the climate question, you know, there is no real African consensus across 54 countries or AU consensus on the approach to China. And it can lead to a zero-sum race to the bottom dynamic where China is individually able to engage particular African countries and therefore has more bargaining power in secure economic deals, commercial deals that are perhaps more beneficial than would be the case if African countries were negotiating as a block. Now, how feasible that might be, I think, is an open question. Butthat is one element, I think, of the asymmetrical relationship. On the question of China's engagement decreasing, I think it is an issue that is important to consider as China goes through a period of economic uncertainty.
I think there was a sense in Beijing that they were over-leveraged economically across the African continent, over-leveraged in the Belt and Road more generally. I think there has been a recalibration that you're seeing in Africa. And I'll just say one final thing which is important: that the West, the United States, and China find ways to cooperate in the African context. It's a tall order, given the rivalry between China and the United States in the Indo-Pacific. But I do think that (if) we abstract away from all the geopolitical rhetoric, China and the United States actually have a lot of shared interests in Africa, particularly shared interests in stability and economic growth across the continent. I don't think China wants instability across the continent any more than the United States does. And so, I do think and I do hope eventually China and the United States are able to think about models of cooperation and can silo off their engagement across the African content from broader geopolitical rivalry. Again, a tall order, I know.
SR: Now, let's turn to Russia, Mike, for a moment, because Russia seems to have capitalized on discontent with neo-colonial legacies, especially in Francophone Africa. And the second Russia-Africa summit, which was held last July in St. Petersburg, saw Putin writing off $23 billion in debt. So, there is a tension between recognizing the need to pursue strategic partnerships with several major powers in an emerging multipolar world and the current restructuring of that very multipolarity, considering Russia's war of aggression in Ukraine, and the souring of American relations.
But let's not forget there is a growing Russian paramilitary influence in Africa, especially in the Central African Republic, in the Sahel zone, and, of course, even in a country like South Africa, we are seeing quite a lot of Russian ideological influence, which has many observers on edge. The recent coup attempts, which you talked about in Niger, in Sudan, Burkina Faso, Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Chad, all of them bear the imprint of Russia's regional ambitions. And the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing last October was attended by leaders from Egypt, from Ethiopia, Kenya, Mozambique, Congo, etc. And we saw that South Africa, Ethiopia, and Egypt will soon become new members of BRICS. So, how will these new geopolitical realignments impact African states' room for political maneuver, both domestically and internationally, you think?
MW: So, on the question of Russia I do think one needs to draw a distinction between Russian engagement across Africa and Chinese engagement. I tend to think of Russian engagement as a bit more...how shall I put it? A bit more destabilizing than Chinese engagement. I think China has long-run economic interests across the continent it wants to preserve. So, it's invested, I think, in stability across the continent. I think Russia has a more short-term set of calculations across the continent. Its economic interests across Africa are quite negligible. And those short-term calculations are around one-upping the West, the United States, the Europeans, and causing them problems across the continent. And in some ways, fomenting instability in particular areas is in their interest. But also, the short-term extraction of natural resources. So, we see this in places like the Central African Republic.
And oftentimes, you have an African country like the Central African Republic that faces real security concerns or Mali. There are real governance issues, and so the West is not willing to fully engage. And as a last resort, these countries turn to Russia for security partnership to deal with their security challenges. And Russia comes in, has come in the past with the Wagner Group to help support the partners that the West is, for various reasons, not willing to support at that juncture. And in return, natural resource concessions are transferred to the Russians.
How does Africa navigate the emerging global geopolitical context between the major powers? There's a lot of debate across the African continent about this. I think the feeling is, we don't want the major power’s problems to be our problems, that we want to navigate or occupy a space of strategic neutrality between the world's major power centers. I think that is the default setting of many African countries and how they want to approach this. But, of course, it's easier said than done. And so, now take, for example, the case of South Africa, and the position that it's taken on the Ukraine war and the kerfuffle that it's entered into, diplomatic kerfuffle it's entered into with the United States on this particular issue. It also raises the question, what does neutrality mean? And South Africa says it's neutral. And then, you find out South Africa's transferred, possibly, weapons to the Russians.
So, all these questions, I think, sort of loom large, but I think African countries, broadly, want to be neutral in this geopolitical contest. Of course, if we take a more cynical approach, it certainly is a case that some African countries seek to instrumentalize this for their own gain, right? I pointed to the example of Ethiopia under the EPRDF. That government was quite willing to quietly tell the Americans, "Look, work with us and give us what we need, in particular in terms of security cooperation. And if not, we have other options." The other option, of course, being China. And that was a credible threat, given the sheer amount of Chinese finance, development finance across Ethiopia in that period.
SR: Thanks so much, Mike, for this wide-ranging and really fascinating conversation on the past and the present of democracy and development across the African continent and especially on the Horn of Africa – Eritrea and Ethiopia in particular. Thanks so much for being with me today.
MW: Yep. Thank you so much.
SR: Outlining a sweeping panorama of strategic dilemmas that African democracies face today, Mike made a powerful case for combining attention to historical detail and thus the need to look beyond mere appearances. Focusing solely on latter may often lead to misunderstandings when it comes to closer engagement with political transformations in the region. Whether deliberate or accidental, such erroneous understandings can generate domestic and foreign support for newly minted leaders who appear to be champions of democracy for a time. Often these leaders turn out to harbour rather undemocratic ambitions, as in the case of the Abiy regime in Ethiopia. Short-lived democratic experiments turning sour may also be emblematic of a wider wave of democratic backsliding sweeping across the African continent, which is not limited to a mere spillover effect of recent coups. As Mike has pointed out, against the background of geopolitical interests and strategic calculations, even liberal Western superpowers have all too often turned a blind eye to democratic deficits in countries such as Ethiopia as long as these governments were perceived to be important partners for western interests. Speaking about his geographical area of expertise, the Horn of Africa, Mike has emphasized that this region is becoming increasingly important for several rival powers besides the U.S., including for instance, the military, as well as commercial, involvement of Arab states from the Gulf region. Regarding alarmist claims about the rapidly growing Chinese presence in Africa, Mike also warned against the filtering everything through the lens of geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China. The effect of Chinese expansion on African democracies has been somewhat mixed so far, in his view, while the historical record of democracy promotion by the West has itself been far from positive. Stability and security in Africa will require at least some cooperation between China and the West or China and the U.S. more specifically. Concluding with a brief discussion of Russia’s geopolitical game in Africa, Mike has contrasted the difference between Chinese and Russian interests primarily in terms of their distinct temporalities, highlighting the fallout from Russia’s essentially short-term objectives. One thing is clear: at the confluence of so many geopolitical and geoeconomic fault lines, African democracies will definitely have a hard time pursuing their ideal of relatively neutrality in the near future.
This was the sixth episode of season eight. Thank you very much for listening. Join us again for the next episode in a fortnight, to hear the second part of my conversation with Mike on the challenges of democracy in Africa today, which will focus on EU-Africa relations against the background of history of colonization and asymmetrical dependency.
Please go back and listen to any episode you might have missed, including the previous two that also focussed on the relationship between democracy and the historical dynamics and logics of capitalism. And of course, let your friends know about this podcast, if you’ve enjoyed it. You can stay in touch with the work of the CEU at www.ceu.edu and the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at www.graduateinstitute.ch/democracy.
[i] Woldemariam, M. (2020). Insurgent fragmentation in the Horn of Africa: Rebellion and its Discontents. Cambridge University Press.
[ii] Verhoeven, H.; Woldemariam, M. (2022). Who lost Ethiopia? The unmaking of an African anchor state and U.S. foreign policy. Contemporary Security Policy, 43(3), 1-29.