Seifudein Adem
Across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East, there is a tendency for states to increasingly reject the muscular transactionalism of great powers. Many in the Global South tend to hedge rather than align, resist rather than submit, diversify markets, reroute finance, and preserve their strategic options. Power today is seen not simply as the capacity to dominate, but as the capacity to try to choose—and to revise those choices without forfeiting autonomy. The task is complex and challenging yet widely viewed as worthwhile.
The modern political relationship between Africa and Asia — or Afrasia (Mazrui and Adem 2013) — is conventionally traced to the 1955 Bandung Conference in Indonesia. Co-sponsored by Burma, India, Indonesia, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka, Bandung brought together nearly two dozen Asian and African countries at a moment when much of Africa remained under colonial rule. Six African states — Egypt, Ghana, Sudan, Ethiopia, Libya, and Liberia — were represented, symbolizing Africa’s emerging political agency and its determination to engage Asia as an equal partner in shaping a postcolonial international order. Never before had Asia and Africa met in this way on the same stage.
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