AFRICA’S INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS

Beth Elise Whitaker

How has history shaped the international relations of African states and peoples? What role does identity play? How are foreign policies linked to domestic political dynamics, and especially to the pursuit of regime security? How are states grappling with the tensions between sovereignty and external pressures? These questions are posed in Africa’s International Relations: Balancing Domestic and Global Interests (Lynne Rienner Publishers 2018) as Whitaker addresses a wide range of ongoing and emerging challenges, all in a historical and theoretical context.

Comprehensive and engaging, this timely introduction to Africa’s international relations explores how power, interests, and ideas influence interactions both among the continent’s states and between African states and other actors in the global arena.

Whitaker is a professor and director of the honors program in the Department of Political Science and Public Administration in UNC Charlotte’s College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. As a Fulbright Scholar in Kenya in 2005-2006, she examined U.S.-African counter-terrorism cooperation. She also has done fieldwork in Tanzania and Botswana. More recently, with a U.S. Department of Defense grant, Whitaker and colleagues have studied how rebel groups’ illicit funding strategies influence the dynamics of civil conflict. Whitaker worked previously at the Brookings Institution and the American Council on Education. Her co-author, John F. Clark, is a professor of politics and international relations at Florida International University.

Dr. Whitaker’s Personally Speaking talk was on Wednesday, October 28. Registration for this presentation is closed, view the video here.

Learn more about the Personally Speaking series.