These dozen essays seek to explore the nature and identity of international relations in Africa. They do this not primarily in the empirical sense of exploring interactions between the continent's states, its regional and international bodies or its diverse transnational actors. Rather the intent of the editors is to examine the manner in which the academic discipline of International Relations, with its theories and methodologies rooted principally in OECD states, has analysed the continent.

As such, this new collection itself is somewhat of a hybrid; a new preface extends these essays first published in hardback in 2012. That volume was partially the extension of a work originally edited by Timothy Shaw and Kevin Dunn back in 2001 under the title of Africa's Challenge to International Relations Theory. This was in turn re-issued in Palgrave's ‘International Political Economy Classics’ series in 2013, with Dunn's preface providing analytical direction and continuity. While the bulk of the essays in the work under review are new, this pedigree in part explains why the collection isn't quite as contemporary or coherent as its title suggests.

The essays are grouped in three sections: ‘Reconceptualizing authority and sovereignty’, ‘Innovations from below’ and ‘Insecurities’. Section one sketches ideas aimed at ‘rethinking’ approaches to IR and Africa. Engel and Olsen in particular seek critical insights via an exploration of ‘regimes of territorialization’, noting the manner in which legitimate alternative authority is emerging both within and between African states. Highlighting the limits of imported views of authority, sovereignty and the notions of ‘state failure’ applied to Africa, they argue that ‘what clearly has failed is the postcolonial social construction and related academic imagery of the state in Africa’ (p. 54).

Section two's essays loosely link the ‘from below’ theme. They examine xenophobia and immigration control in South Africa, thence governance in Somalia and the role of diasporas and development in Sierra Leone. Texts on violence in the Niger Delta, the growth of private security actors and a gendered evaluation of African insecurity comprise the final section.

These individual chapters do generate considerable empirical and analytical insights. Yet the reader is unlikely to conclude clearly as to whether Africans are ‘still challenging IR theory’ (to paraphrase the editors' jointly authored introduction). Nor will they be sure as to the likely trajectories of the ‘Futures for African International Relations’, putatively examined in the conclusion.

There are two reasons for this. Firstly the new Preface (notably p. xvii) and chunks of both the introductory and concluding essays appear overambitious lists of issues. The editors fleetingly evoke a large number of evolving policy agendas and new relationships (notably with BRICS), few of which feature significantly in the volume's texts. They also simultaneously seek to both use and critique external stereotypes of the continent (‘African miracle’, the ‘hapless/hopeless’ trope, the dawning of ‘an African century’, etc.).

Secondly, the collection's aim at being ‘an update and extension’ of Shaw's earlier edited volumes critiquing academic International Relations' engagement with Africa, is insufficiently pursued here. The fact that ‘IR's intellectual assemblage has been rather frail to date in relation to African processes' is noted (p. 4) but systematic explorations of alternative epistemologies or theories are largely absent. Nor are insights provided into the material conditions of African universities, foreign ministries or think tanks – from which such alternatives might emerge – while material and racial divides among IR scholars are evoked only in the closing pages.