African Summitry

Abstract

The role of summits in the international politics of post-colonial Africa must be seen within a context dominated by five factors. The first derives from the very process of decolonization itself. As the colonial flags came down and the new flags of the independent states rose to replace them, the formal powers and institutions were transferred from European states to the African states themselves, but this inheritance consisted of precisely those arrangements and links which had hitherto served the imperial states. Few involved long and well-developed understandings between countries, and the African states had little actual physical presence, in the form of embassies or High Commissions, in other sovereign states within the continent. Existing lines of communication were overwhelmingly limited to those between what was now an independent country and the former metropolitan power, because virtually the last responsibility to be handed over in the extended process of transferring power was control of foreign relations.¹ Hence, the new states of Africa had to construct their foreign relations (as well as their foreign policies) de novo. What forms these would take and who would dominate them were initial questions of major importance to be resolved.²