A number of African subregional organizations were established in the 1970s and 1980s to deal with common economic, environmental, and political problems. Several of these organizations assumed important roles in conflict mediation, peace negotiations, and peacekeeping pro-cesses after the Cold War. Especially significant for their diplomatic and military efforts were the Economic Community of West Afri-can States (ECOWAS), the Economic Community of Central AfriAfri-can
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States (ECCAS), the International Conference on the Great Lakes Re-gion (ICGLR), and the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD). The Southern African Development Community (SADC), which had been central to struggles against white minority rule during the periods of decolonization and the Cold War, was a less significant po-litical and economic actor in later decades. Like the global and regional organizations described earlier, the subregional organizations also suf-fered from internal conflicts that reduced their effectiveness.
Economic Community of West African States
ECOWAS was established in 1975 by sixteen West African states whose leaders hoped to promote subregional economic cooperation and de-velopment.11 Some members imagined ECOWAS as an instrument for undermining French influence in a subregion where the former impe-rial power maintained close political, economic, and military ties to its onetime colonies and intervened frequently in their affairs. Nigeria, the anglophone subregional powerhouse, hoped to use the organization as a launching pad for its own political and economic ambitions, which in-cluded weakening the francophone powers and establishing a common market with Nigeria as the linchpin.
Although ECOWAS was not conceived as a security organization, it increasingly assumed that role, especially after the Cold War, when ex-ternal interest in Africa diminished. A 1981 protocol provided for mutual assistance against external aggression and for the establishment of an ECOWAS military force to protect member states from such aggression.
The ECOWAS force was permitted to intervene in an internal conflict in a member state at the request of that state’s government if the conflict was promoted by external forces and if it jeopardized subregional peace and stability. The 1999 “Protocol Relating to the Mechanism for Con-flict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security”
elaborated on the force’s function. It could assist in conflict prevention, humanitarian intervention to thwart subregional instability, sanctions enforcement, peacekeeping, disarmament, demobilization, and peace building, and in the policing of gun running, drug smuggling, and other transterritorial crimes. The protocol was to be applied in cases of threat-ened or actual external aggression or conflict in a member state, conflict between two or more member states, internal conflict that could pro-voke humanitarian disaster or threaten subregional peace and security,
serious and massive violations of human rights and the rule of law, the overthrow or attempted overthrow of a democratically elected govern-ment, and other situations as determined by the ECOWAS Mediation and Security Council.
Although ECOWAS members agreed to cooperate on subregional security issues, francophone and anglophone states often maintained uneasy relationships. Even when the organization was charged with the purportedly neutral task of peacekeeping, its constituent members some-times supported opposing sides of a conflict—as was the case in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Côte d’Ivoire. Moreover, larger, wealthier states often wielded undue influence over the organization’s actions. As the largest financial contributor to ECOWAS, for instance, Nigeria ensured that its own interests were protected and promoted. Because the AU funds many ECOWAS operations, powerful AU members states have had dispropor-tionate influence over West African affairs.
Economic Community of Central African States
ECCAS was established in October 1983 by member states of the Central African Customs and Economic Union and of the Economic Commu-nity of the Great Lakes States. In 2017, ECCAS included eleven member states.12 The organization’s goal was to establish a wider economic com-munity and to promote peaceful resolution of political disputes. Nota-bly, in July 2015, the UN Security Council asked ECCAS to work with ECOWAS and the AU to develop a comprehensive strategy to combat the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, Niger, and Cameroon—the lat-ter an ECCAS member state. Like other multinational bodies, ECCAS was sometimes weakened by internal disagreements. Conflicts in the DRC, the geographic linchpin of the subregion, split the organization, with Angola and Chad supporting the DRC government and Burundi opposing it.
International Conference on the Great Lakes Region
ICGLR was established in 2000 by eleven African states to promote subregional cooperation for international peace and security, political stability, and sustainable development in the Great Lakes subregion.13 The organization aspired to address the structural causes of enduring conflicts and underdevelopment. Like other subregional bodies, ICGLR
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was sometimes compromised by internal rivalries. Conflicts in the DRC pitted ICGLR member states Burundi, Rwanda, and Uganda against the DRC government, which was supported by Angola as well as by several non-ICGLR states. ICGLR mediation efforts were occasionally led by interested parties. Some questioned the organization’s ability to engage impartially in the South Sudan conflict, noting Uganda’s military support for the government, which along with rebel forces had been accused of massive human rights violations.
Intergovernmental Authority on Development
The Intergovernmental Authority on Drought and Development was established in 1986 by six East African countries to cooperate on prob-lems resulting from the severe drought, environmental degradation, and economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s. In 1996 the organization was su-perseded by the Intergovernmental Authority on Development (IGAD), which expanded the areas of subregional cooperation to include the pro-motion of subregional peace and stability and the creation of mechanisms to prevent, manage, and resolve intra- and interstate conflicts through dialogue.14 As was the case for other subregional organizations, IGAD was weakened by internal rivalries, and member states sometimes pur-sued parochial interests rather than promoting broader regional benefits.
Ethiopia and Kenya struggled to assert subregional dominance, while Sudan and Uganda also jockeyed for influence. Operating within these constraints, IGAD helped broker an accord that established a transi-tional federal government in Somalia; it also provided a military force to protect that government and train its security forces. However, the foreign-backed regime, beholden to powerful warlords and their exter-nal patrons, had scant support inside Somalia. IGAD also played a key role in mediating an end to Sudan’s civil war in 2005 and in attempting to resolve subsequent conflicts in South Sudan in 2014–17. However, the competing interests of IGAD member states and the continued sup-port of some states for rival factions seriously undermined the resulting agreements.
Southern African Development Community
The Southern African Development Coordination Conference (SADCC) was established in 1980 by nine Southern African states to build new
networks of trade, transportation, communications, and energy and to promote agricultural and industrial alternatives that would break apart-heid South Africa’s economic stranglehold on the subregion. In 1992, SADCC was reformulated as the Southern African Development Com-munity, or SADC, which aimed to promote subregional integration, economic growth, development, peace, and security in the aftermath of white minority rule. SADC eventually broadened its membership to in-clude fifteen African countries.15
Although SADCC had played a pivotal role in the struggles for majority rule in Zimbabwe, Namibia, and South Africa in the 1980s, its successor organization was less significant in the 1990s and 2000s.
Member states sometimes promoted opposing strategies. In the DRC, for instance, Angola, Namibia, and Zimbabwe supported the Congo-lese government militarily, while South Africa attempted to mediate a negotiated solution to the conflict. In 2013, SADC as an entity became more directly involved in the DRC when it joined ICGLR in promoting a regional peace and security framework and contributed soldiers to the UN intervention brigade that was intended to enforce the agree-ment. South Africa also played an independent role outside SADC and the subregion, helping to broker peace agreements in Burundi, the Central African Republic, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Sudan, and Sudan.
Although the political, economic, and military destabilization asso-ciated with apartheid ended in 1994, South Africa continued to domi-nate the subregion and played a growing role on the continent and in the global arena. South African mining, construction, retail, and media and telecommunications companies invested heavily in the Southern Afri-can subregion and across the continent. Pretoria’s economic clout was accompanied by growing political influence. After apartheid’s demise, South Africa became the unofficial African voice in key international organizations. It played a prominent role in organizations that promote alternative visions in the Global South, including the AU, in which it was a prime mover, the Non-Aligned Movement, the United Nations Confer-ence on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), and BRICS, an association that champions the interests of the major emerging economies of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
An advocate for populations in the southern hemisphere, South Africa also supported initiatives that strengthened the position of the
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Global North. It encouraged participation in the AU-led New Partner-ship for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), which embraces the neoliberal economic policies of international financial institutions and the North-ern industrialized countries—particularly those of the powerful Group of Seven (G7), an organization that aims to build consensus on econom-ics, energy, security, and terrorism.16 In 2017, South Africa was the only African member of the Northern-dominated Group of 20 (G20), which included nineteen of the world’s largest industrialized and emerging economies, plus the EU.17 South Africa’s prominence was also evident in its designation as one of the EU’s strategic partners and its election to two terms on the UN Security Council (2007–8 and 2011–12), where it had a voice, if not a veto, on matters relating to foreign intervention in Africa.
As a nonpermanent member of the Security Council, South Africa was susceptible to external pressure. It sometimes broke with AU positions to support those of the Western powers, as it did when it voted to estab-lish a no-fly zone in Libya in 2011. However, it endorsed the AU’s call for UN reforms that would grant African countries two permanent and five rotating seats on the Security Council. South Africa, like Nigeria, aspired to assume a veto-wielding position.
Pretoria’s increasingly forceful presence in Africa and on the world stage was embraced by some on the continent as an example of Afri-cans finding solutions for African problems. However, others charged that South Africa subordinated subregional and regional interests to its own interests—or to those of global capital. While Northern pow-ers looked to Pretoria to protect their interests, Nigeria resisted South Africa’s heightened continental profile, and neighboring states remained wary of the subregional giant, which, no longer fettered by international sanctions, aggressively expanded its economic reach. Egypt, Ethiopia, and Kenya—with their growing economies and strong ties to the West—
joined Nigeria in challenging South Africa’s presumed right to represent the continent in global bodies.