Description:
The New Cold War in Africa illuminates the intricate interplay of external influences and African prerogatives by analyzing the interests and activities of major powers like China, the United States, Russia, and the European Union in Africa - while simultaneously highlighting the agency of African leaders and actors in navigating and reshaping global competition to their advantage.
Combining theoretical insights with fieldwork-based case studies that bridge international relations and comparative politics, African development, political and economic geography, and security studies, this book offers a nuanced understanding of Africa's dual role as a battleground for great power rivalry and as a transformative agent in reconfiguring global power dynamics.
Review Quotes:
"The New Cold War in Africa arrives at exactly the right moment: the liberal international order is fracturing under competing pressures, and the intellectual frameworks to make sense of it are struggling to keep up. Make no mistake, the New Cold War is not simply Cold War 2.0 - and nowhere is this clearer than in Africa, where it unfolds as a war 'in' rather than 'for' the continent. The contest is not over Africa as a prize, but through Africa as a terrain: its resources, infrastructure networks, digital stacks, and political alignments are the medium through which global power is being renegotiated. In this context, the book takes seriously the question of African agency without romanticising it. From Russian disinformation networks in the Sahel, through China's webpower strategy, to the United States' transactional retrenchment and the EU's uncertain pivot from normative to geopolitical actor - Carmody maps the full architecture of great power competition in Africa with analytical precision. Essential reading for anyone working on great power competition, resource geopolitics, and Africa's place in the emerging multipolar order."
Dominik Kopiński, Head of Department of International Economic Relations, University of Wroclaw