African Agency as Agency Slack: From Fiction to Multilateral Empirics

Abstract

This chapter delineates the concept of African agency in the context of the AU. It highlights agency slack as a response to Africa’s subaltern position in international politics. It clarifies its radical departure from conventional treatments of the concept, and makes a stronger case for two forms of agency slack—shirking and slippage. This chapter includes a conceptual delineation which highlights certain sensitising variables such as freedom, choice, identity, intentionality and unfettered action. It also argues that although the agency has improved since the days of the OAU, not much has changed. Africa primarily remains where it was in the 1970s; and slack is a response to the subaltern dynamics enabled by empire and post-coloniality. The chapter also operationalizes African agency in the AU context, by identifying actors and agential processes within and beyond the organisation.