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ISSN : 2056-564X E-ISSN: 2056-5658
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Dear friends,
This issue of the Journal of African Foreign Affairs focuses on Africa in world affairs with particular emphasis on the continent’s relationships with the BRICS nations including intra-BRICS interactions with India, China, and Russia and extra-BRICS politics vis-à-vis the European Union and in the Pakistan-India conflict. Of course, South Africa’s role is unavoidable. It ends with Africa’s own endeavors from the role of parliamentary diplomacy in foreign policy making in Zimbabwe, to regional organizations such as SADEC and COMESA, and to continent-wide economic reconfiguration in the form of African Continental Free Trade Agreement (ACFTA).
Professor Jagdish Sheth of Emory University, author of Chindia Rising: Implications for Global Competitiveness (2011), in a video presentation titled “The African Awakening: When Will the Giant Wake Up” asserted that the second half of the 21st century will be an African century the same way the first half of the century is called Asian century. His argument is essentially based on four major factors: Africa is the largest resource rich continent in the world; it has a growing self-conscious middle class; it is modernizing faster than people realize; and it is endowed with an entrepreneurial DNA.
The internal reforms, the roles played by regional organizations, the continent-wide economic reconfiguration through ACFTA, as analyzed by the articles in this issue, indicate a growing agency of the continent in world affairs and give validity to the optimistic take of Professor Sheth on Africa’s future.