- Dr. Kelvin Meyeyin-Bala
The
post-Cold-War unipolar world is evolving to a competitive multipolar order,
where America, China, the European Union, Russia, India and a cluster of
assertive mid-tier powers contend over markets, influence, resources.
Increasingly a pivot in this transition is Africa: her young, growing world –
Africa commands world’s fastest growth, the bulk of minerals required by energy
transition and what can eventually be the world’s single largest market by
population via the African Continental Free Trade Area. This paper addresses a
nexus where Africa’s changing geopolitical significance within new world order;
a structural challenge that this rise represents; the nature and dynamic of the
external partnerships (China, the U.S., EU, Russia, Gulf, Turkey, India)
determining this transition; and Nigeria, its largest black democracy and
largest black economy, whether can translate scale of population and economy to
strategic influence. African structural centrality is moving upwards without
agency of one or any state; Nigeria has right kind of material-population,
economy and diplomacy-to provide leadership to continent, but it cannot
effectively use it due to its security and economic insecurity; infrastructure
deficit and institutional frailness. Nigeria’s, and in fact Africa’s, strategic
influence in new world order will turn less to the external powers than
endogenous policy and governance reforms.
Keywords: Africa, multipolarity, new
world order, critical minerals, AfCFTA, Nigeria, foreign policy, strategic
partners, Africa regional power