Introduction
Africa’s positioning in International Relations (IR) scholarship has generated important debates and criticism. It has been argued that the continent is usually relegated to the margins in the study of IR.Footnote 1 When brought in, Africa and its states are generally measured against a Western ideal of the state, and found to fall short, rendering them deviations.Footnote 2 Furthermore, theories, concepts, and analytical approaches developed from analyses of Africa’s IR that diverge from mainstream IR approaches are rarely absorbed into the mainstream.Footnote 3 Thus, while Africa is studied, it is not positioned as a context from which concepts, theories, and approaches are developed to inform mainstream IR scholarship.
Several proposals have been made to reposition Africa in IR.Footnote 4 They include prioritizing not only the state, but also sub-state entities and non-state actors.Footnote 5 Scholars also argue that it is important to probe how Africa’s international relations have been shaped by colonialism, capitalism, race, and other elements of the international system. However, while African feminists have articulated similar arguments, African feminisms are not central in the literature on Africa’s IR. Mainstream IR theories also do not engage with African feminisms. Neither does feminist IR, which has also been critical of mainstream IR’s sidelining of feminist scholarship.Footnote 6 Thus, while the number of IR studies on women and gender in Africa has grown, scholars have not engaged with African feminisms or drawn on their perspectives in this scholarship.
This has resulted in theorizing and analyses that do not always reflect the complexities of Africa’s international relations. Causal mechanisms and variables that impact contemporary phenomena and practices are sometimes missing from explanations of the workings of gender and IR in Africa. The implications of this truncated approach to studying Africa are not limited to the academy.Footnote 7 Writing about IR’s blindness to race, Bell notes that it has ‘constrained the discipline’s ability to imagine a different world.’Footnote 8 Similarly, the failure to engage with African feminisms limits IR’s ability to produce scholarship with the potential to transform women’s lives and gender relations on the continent.
Therefore, the objective of this article is to put African feminisms in conversation with IR. Indeed, Heidi Hudson notes that understanding African feminisms is important for studying gender in an ‘African IR context.’Footnote 9 I discuss how engaging with African feminisms can help IR address some of the criticisms of how Africa has been studied in the sub-discipline. I show how attention to African feminist thought can generate new insights into the intersection of gender and IR in Africa and contribute to conceptualizing, theorizing, and analysing.
The literature on Africa’s IR points to several ways in which IR can bring African political thought in from the margins. They include: (1) paying attention to the complexity of society, state, and international relations, and (2) looking beyond deviance in trying to understand the state. I show how African feminist thought, particularly in its focus on the complexity of context and on history and intersectionality, can provide us with insights that address these gaps in the IR literature. In addition to re (claiming) the diversity within subaltern feminist thought, this engagement with African feminisms brings IR closer to reflecting the realities of Africa’s IR and broadens the research agenda on feminism, women, and gender on the continent. In the next section, I provide an overview of African feminisms. I then analyse how they address the gap in the IR literature and conclude with a discussion of a more expansive agenda for future research.
African feminist thought: an overview
While African countries are studied in IR, concepts and theories developed in Africa rarely inform this scholarship. Scholars of IR, therefore, do not engage with African feminisms, which are grounded in African history and centre African women’s ideas and realities, and are relevant for understanding and explaining IR. With a few exceptions, even feminist IR theory, which recognizes the importance of women’s perspectives, is not in conversation with African feminisms.Footnote 10 Consequently, IR scholarship on Africa, including when it is about gender, women, and feminism, often lacks critical African feminist insights and is thus limited in what it can explain and in the thoroughness of the claims made. Thus, where explanations contain solutions to problems, they are usually recommendations that are not transformative and cannot significantly and sustainably shift the status quo. In this section, I provide a background to African feminisms and discuss the emphasis in this literature on scholarship that reflects the complexity of gender and of women’s lives on the continent, and that is transformative.
African feminisms theorize women’s lives and gender in Africa, and organize around these issues, with political, sociocultural, and economic transformations as goals. According to Mama, they refer to ‘the liberatory political philosophies, theories, writings, research and cultural production, as well as the organizing work of the transnational community of feminists from Africa.’Footnote 11 African feminists seek to end patriarchal domination. The Charter of Feminist Principles for African Feminists states that, ‘as feminists, we define our work in investing individual and institutional energies in the struggle against all forms of patriarchal oppression and exploitation.’Footnote 12 African feminists also interrogate the links between African women’s experiences in all spheres and global institutions and powers. Lewis explains that they ‘have a shared intellectual commitment to critiquing gender and imperialism coupled with a collective focus on a continental identity shaped by particular relations of subordination in the world economy and global social and cultural practices.’Footnote 13 They conceptualize and theorize how African women have engaged with, shaped, and been affected by local and global political, sociocultural, and economic forces.
African feminist thought has diverse political and philosophical foundations and has been shaped by women’s histories and realities on the continent, including women’s activism and movements.Footnote 14 There is a long history of women in Africa articulating feminist viewpoints and engaging in feminist activism, even though many did not adopt the label ‘feminist.’Footnote 15 These women include chiefs, queens, queen mothers, and priestesses in precolonial and colonial Africa who challenged patriarchal and colonial domination. They also include activists such as Funmilayo Ransome Kuti from the then British Protectorate of Southern Nigeria, who led and participated in movements against colonial rule and exploitation.Footnote 16 Post-independence and contemporary women activists and women’s movements have mobilized against issues such as state violence, armed conflict, environmental pollution, and gender-based violence, and some of them have adopted a feminist ethos.Footnote 17
Nonetheless, there are many schools of African feminism. In fact, some thinkers reject the label ‘feminist.’ Variants of African feminism that have been articulated include ‘womanism,’ ‘Social Transformation including Women in Africa (STIWANISM),’ ‘nego-feminism,’ ‘femalism,’ ‘motherism,’ ‘snail-sense feminism,’ and ‘the bosadi approach.’ Nkealah explains that these forms of feminism ‘sought to theorise African gender relations differently’ and were ideologies that emerged from ‘African women’s forays into their cultures and histories.’Footnote 18 This naming of variants of African feminism happened mostly in the 1990s, and the schools of thought they represent envision varied paths to African women’s political and socioeconomic advancement. Some of them are built on distinct ideas of womanhood. For example, Acholonu’s motherism is premised on the idea that motherhood is central and of the highest value in African societies. Similarly, Opara’s femalism centres on reproduction and nurturing. She states that femalism ‘stresses the female body in the raw. The organs of reproduction, the womb and breasts, are in the main viewed as agents of female empowerment.’Footnote 19 While Nnaemeka’s nego-feminism does not centre motherhood, it advocates for conciliation instead of confrontations with patriarchy.Footnote 20 She explains that ‘First, nego-feminism is the feminism of negotiation; second, nego-feminism stands for “no ego” feminism. The foundational shared values in many African cultures are the principles of negotiation, give and take, compromise, and balance.’Footnote 21 Ezeigbo’s snail-sense feminism also sees a similar path to women’s advancement on the continent. It calls on African women to learn from the snail because it ‘traverses harsh terrain with caution, flexibility [and] foresight.’Footnote 22
These schools of thought have generated important observations, debates, and criticisms that have furthered African feminist scholarship. Scholars have criticized the essentialism of approaches like motherism and femalism. Writing in 1997, Gwendolyn Mikell demonstrates the problem when she conceptualizes African feminism as ‘distinctly heterosexual, pro-natal, and concerned with many “bread, butter, culture, and power” issues.’Footnote 23 Approaches that are heteronormative and those that situate womanhood in specific categories of women (e.g., mothers or rural women) exclude many African women and can be harmful. Variants of African feminism, such as nego-feminism, that make a case for conciliation with patriarchy have also engendered discussion in the literature. Dosekun notes that these ‘claims about the culturally-prescribed conciliatoriness of African feminisms are at direct odds with the precolonial histories of African women’s “feistiness.”’Footnote 24 Furthermore, they are in conflict with the goals of gender equality and political, sociocultural, and economic transformation that are fundamental to African feminisms.Footnote 25
Therefore, there are contestations and debates in the African feminist literature, and these have been important for the continuing development of African feminist thought. The responses to the variants of the 1990s have included conceptualizations of African feminism that are inclusive of the realities of a diversity of African women. Lyn Ossome states that a ‘more progressive current views the potency of African feminism as located within a shared intellectual commitment to critiquing gender and imperialism coupled with a collective focus on a continental identity shaped by particular relations of subordination in the world economy and global social and cultural practice.’Footnote 26 Relations of domination and exploitation at all levels remain important areas of enquiry.
While culture and indigeneity are important, scholars recognize that tying African feminisms to specific cultural beliefs or practices, to the exclusion of others, leads to formulations that are limiting and even discriminatory. Dosekun explains that while culture and tradition are relevant, they are not ‘fixed, essential or determining, or, therefore, immune to questioning, resistance, or change.’Footnote 27 Thus, while the continental identity is important, with Africa denoting the context and life in Africa shaping African feminist priorities, culture is not immutable or monolithic. Reflecting the importance of the continental identity, Nkealah states that ‘African feminism brings together ideologies on the quest for empowerment, equality, justice and self-actualisation by women living on the continent of Africa and by women from African countries living in various African diasporas.’
African feminists focus on internal and external relations of subordination that are inimical to the advancement of women and to gender equality. Their analyses in literature, economics, sociology, and politics, among other fields, recognize the harms that patriarchy inflicts on women and underline gender inequality as a core impediment to women’s rights and wellbeing.Footnote 28 They point to multiple layers of domination, including imperialism, colonialism, and authoritarian rule, that have negatively affected women’s rights and security on the continent. Hudson explains that ‘their point of departure is to address oppressions simultaneously, and in that context, gender is but one unit of analysis that sometimes has to subject itself to the universal bond between men and women against racism and imperialism.’ Thus, while they prioritize contemporary struggles, they employ colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, and other global processes as lenses through which to analyse and understand gender and women and the continent’s place in the international system. They also view history as important for analysing the present.
While some of their contributions are discipline-specific, they also advance scholarship across disciplines. The interrogation of gender is an example of a contribution that should inform how Africa is studied in all disciplines, including IR. African feminists have questioned the universality of gender and its use in analysing African societies. For example, Oyěwùmí, writing about the Yoruba of Nigeria, argues that seniority ‘based on relative age’ and not gender, is the central organizing principle within society. ‘The traditional Yoruba family can be described as a non-gendered family. It is non-gendered because kinship roles and categories are not gender-differentiated.’Footnote 29 In his study of the Upper West Region of Ghana, Dery argues that ‘Men and women as gendered categories understand their positions in the family in terms of performing distinct roles and responsibilities which are not necessarily hierarchical. Women are accorded respect because they are considered “yir-miere” (i.e., the backbone of the family) and “yir-maale” (the peace-maker of the house).’Footnote 30 Though these and other claims have been subject to debate, they challenge the notion that gender operates uniformly across the globe.Footnote 31 They show that the dominant understanding of how gender operates, which has been developed based on the norms in Western societies, cannot be uncritically accepted in all contexts and should be interrogated. Thus, the significance and manifestation of gender cannot be divorced from contexts and cultures, both historical and contemporary. African feminists, therefore, make the case for scholarship that does not take concepts such as gender as given and is instead open to discovering what they look like in various contexts.
Indeed, African feminists recognize that gender is one of many principles that organize life on the continent. They, therefore, argue that an intersectional approach is needed to study women and gender on the continent. They make a case for intersectionality not only of identities but also of structures. According to Yacob-Haliso, ‘one of the major contributions of African women’s scholarship and activism to the advancement of intersectional analysis is its persistent centring of social structures of inequality concomitant with analysis of the complexity of individual identities.’Footnote 32 It is with this intersectional lens that they study multiple layers of domination and complicate our understanding of how factors such as gender and race function in societies.
African feminists also underline transformation as a central goal of African feminist thought and organizing.Footnote 33 They envision a reformed world as opposed to one that is simply different.Footnote 34 And to get to a place of liberation and transformation (in thought and practice), one has to identify and analyse the interconnected local and international forces that daily impact people’s lives. For African feminists ‘true emancipation requires a deep critique of historical and systemic power structures.’Footnote 35 This purpose animates both thought and feminist organizing, and attention to it offers IR avenues for a transformative study of Africa’s IR. In the next section, I discuss how specific ideas from African feminisms can address gaps in how Africa is studied in IR.
Bringing African feminist thought into IR
Scholars of Africa’s IR have underlined several problems with how Africa is studied in IR. They include: (1) insufficient attention to the complexity of society, state, and international relations; and (2) an emphasis on comparing African states to a Western ideal state. In this section, I examine how African feminist thought can help IR address these weaknesses. It is important to note that the shortcomings of mainstream IR, which have been underlined in the literature on Africa’s IR, are not (fully) evident in all schools of IR theory.Footnote 36 For example, feminist IR has been critical of mainstream IR theories for some of these same reasons. Feminist IR scholars have questioned realists’ positioning of the state as the preeminent actor in international politics. They underline the importance of non-state actors and recognize the agency of ordinary people.Footnote 37 Tickner points out that while realism sees states operating in an asocial environment, feminist theory is sociological.Footnote 38 Relatedly, feminist IR is also normative and emancipatory, seeking to improve the conditions of women, and challenges the notion of the state as protector. Nonetheless, with a few exceptions, feminist IR does not engage with African feminisms. Consequently, fundamental points such as how gender operates differently in some African contexts are not examined in the feminist IR literature and do not inform studies of gender, women, and feminism in Africa. It also means that key concepts such as security and transformation have been studied without attention to how they have been defined in African feminisms.Footnote 39 Thus, feminist IR typifies some of the shortcomings of mainstream theories. In this section, I discuss how IR scholars can draw on African feminisms to address some of these criticisms.
The complexity of state, society, and international relations
Scholars argue that to understand Africa’s IR, one needs to look within the state. This is a call to move away from the state-centric approach and adopt alternative units of analysis.Footnote 40 In doing this, it is important to recognize that many pre-determined ideas have been imposed on the continent and have determined which questions are asked and how they are answered.Footnote 41 Abrahamsen explains that ‘the object or area of study – be it the state, society, Africa, or the international – is not predetermined by existing theories and categories, but instead approached as something to be discovered empirically in the way that different elements are fitted together into contingent systems of varying durability.’Footnote 42 There are insights from African feminism that allow for such discovery.
First, African feminists identify spaces and actors that are important for IR but are often not studied. Indeed, spheres and actors that are not typically studied within IR (e.g., customary courts and traditional authorities) can shape how policies, and by extension international norms, are implemented locally.Footnote 43 African feminist scholarship shows that actors such as traditional leaders can be important for IR. Ossome, discussing the endurance of traditional authorities, explains that they have been delegated disciplinary and retributive powers by the state.Footnote 44 Their enactment of these powers is gendered and often experienced differently by women and men, and shapes how international norms are implemented. For example, a study of the state’s response to sexual violence in post-conflict Côte d’Ivoire showed how some male chiefs were discouraging female survivors of sexual violence from filing complaints and instead insisting on customary dispute resolution mechanisms.Footnote 45 Consequently, many cases were not reaching the police and gendarmerie, which were undergoing reform by the UN peacekeeping mission. And even when cases were reported, chiefs sometimes successfully intervened for their withdrawal, thus preventing the state from enforcing laws and implementing international norms. What this shows is that actors that are not typically seen as important players in the international relations of the state are hugely influential in how international norms and policies are implemented and how people benefit from them. African feminisms identify these actors and explain how they impact the state and society.
In addition to actors, they underline the importance of sociocultural norms. They show how gender sometimes operates differently and also how norms within African contexts determine how international norms are implemented. For example, social norms that prioritize community cohesion over accountability affect whether people report crimes such as intimate partner violence, rape, and even murder to the police.Footnote 46 Thus, in countries that have undergone extensive post-conflict reform of the criminal justice system to enable them to implement elements of the women, peace, and security agenda, the pressure on victims and their families to prioritize harmony (and thus, protect the perpetrator) undermines implementation. These norms can support gender inequality and facilitate the interference of traditional leaders in criminal cases.Footnote 47
Scholars argue that Africa’s international relations cannot be divorced from the legacies of colonialism and imperialism.Footnote 48 And though it has been on the sidelines of IR, race has shaped the international system. Through their focus on multiple and interconnected sources of domination, African feminisms have been critical of this international system and have examined its effect on women’s lives and gender relations. The African Feminist Charter notes that ‘patriarchy is inter-related with and informs relationships of class, race, ethnic, religious and global-imperialism.’ Through their analysis, African feminists show how we can illuminate these processes, so that they are not hidden in IR.
They argue that a rich contextual analysis is needed to understand and theorize Africa’s international relations.Footnote 49 For example, writing about the intractable nature of conflict-related sexual violence, Ayiera and Ayiera explain that ‘by excising sexual violence in conflict situations from its complicating contexts, the international discourse deals with the challenge as if it were an independent phenomenon that emerges because of armed conflict and can, therefore, be fixed by applying appropriate legal and policy measures to the perpetrators when caught.’Footnote 50 By tracing how the global economic system affects African women in all spheres, they demonstrate what can be learned when studies go beyond the local in their examinations of issues such as conflict-related sexual violence.Footnote 51 The adoption of an intersectional lens that privileges structures, in addition to identities, also allows for the identification of the relevant actors and the principles and pathways that they employ to impact women’s lives and gender relations.Footnote 52
This focus on context would also allow us to trace the historical (including colonial) roots of many of the (security) norms, institutions, and challenges on the continent, and to understand their evolution. For example, archival research has revealed the rape of African women by British, Belgian, and other colonial officers and the African troops under their command.Footnote 53 Attention to history would lead us to ask how this history has shaped contemporary experiences of conflict-related sexual violence. It would also show how African women have challenged and, in some cases, reformed these norms and institutions, highlighting their mutability and paths to feminist transformation.Footnote 54 This and other insights from African feminisms show how we can study the complexity of African societies and their relations with the state and the international.
Comparing the African state to a Western ideal
Scholars of Africa’s IR also argue that the continent is often compared to a Western ideal.Footnote 55 By holding up the Western state as the norm, African states are especially perceived to be lacking and thus deviant.Footnote 56 In the study of gender and security, for example, scholars have sought to understand when and why states deviate from/adhere to Western state norms (e.g., under what conditions do armed factions perpetrate sexual violence during conflicts? When are states more likely to implement the resolutions that make up the women, peace, and security agenda?). These questions are important and necessary for understanding, conceptualizing, and theorizing women’s security. However, the framing of questions primarily to investigate why African states do/do not behave in ways that are consistent with the assumptions and norms of mainstream IR obscures how perceived deviations from the norm can offer important insights into how we study and understand the state.
African feminisms offer a way to address this issue. As explained in the previous section, they show how we can uncover actors and institutions that have ordered life on the continent yet are under-researched in IR. Therefore, attention to these perspectives would allow us to intellectually conceive of arrangements that challenge the dominant idea of the state. They would enable us to investigate the behaviour of states beyond dominant IR frameworks that highlight deviance. As Smith explains:
Another potential source of a new IR story is unpacking how African states’ behavior differs from that normally ascribed to the state, and to determine whether what are regarded as ‘aberrations’ are important for generating a greater understanding of IR not only in Africa but also in other parts of the world.Footnote 57
In applying this to the study of gender, women, and feminism in IR, it is important to emphasize that the point here is not that the failure of African states to perform core security functions should not be noted and criticized. It is also not a call to do away with progressive norms and values (which are also championed by African feminists) when studying the state in Africa. Rather, the point is that focusing exclusively on understanding why and how ‘deviance’ occurs and never on how this ‘deviance’ can change our understanding of the state and its engagements with the international sphere is limiting.
African feminist frameworks can lead us to ask innovative questions in this regard. For example, in studying how gender-based violence in conflict-affected countries is addressed, what happens if, in addition to exploring police reform, we begin to think of new/unconventional actors and mechanisms that address the problem? How can African women’s history of challenging traditional authorities inform the variables we include in our analyses? Under what conditions can traditional authorities become partners in advancing progressive agendas? Scholars can also ask if there are societal arrangements that can be adapted to promote rights and security. How can the unique manifestation of gender in some contexts be employed to challenge patriarchal norms that interact with international norms? Are there lessons that can be learned and applied to other regional settings? With such questions, we are taking societies and states as they are and exploring how they can advance what we understand about the continent. This is not an argument for abandoning transformation as a goal of African feminisms. Rather, it requires us to imagine alternate pathways to transformation. It also requires us to imagine different versions of the ideal state in IR and to centre African feminisms in these imaginings.
Conclusion: a transformative IR
There is a fine line that has to be walked in trying to explain and advocate for Africa’s place in IR. On one hand, there is a need to show that Western ideas, norms, and analytical tools do not always capture the complexity of the state and its relations in Africa. On the other hand, in making this point, there is a risk of essentialism and of reinforcing the notion that Africa cannot be understood using mainstream analytical tools.Footnote 58 This perspective suggests that Africa is so different that mainstream IR theories become irrelevant to understanding how African states function. There is also a risk of reinforcing the notion that Africans, and other non-Westerners, have not contributed to international political thought and to the construction and promotion of norms and values that are labelled ‘Western.’ It is, therefore, important to state here that the objective of this article is to demonstrate the gaps in IR’s engagement with Africa and to propose an approach that can ensure more accurate and comprehensive accounts of the continent. The findings of studies of African countries can be employed to build theories with potentially wide application.
In this article, I have argued that attention to actors, processes, and norms identified by African feminisms can strengthen IR scholarship. Answering African feminists’ call to examine history and context as they affect women would allow for a deeper and more critical interrogation of society and the state, and of how international actors and processes interact with and affect/are affected by them. It would also enable us to look beyond deviance to identify actors, institutions, and norms that unsettle dominant ideas about the state.
Furthermore, when we take African feminisms’ attention to transformation seriously, we would have to begin to examine the concept. What is transformation in IR? We would also have to unsettle the status quo of the international system that has fostered domination, extraction, and inequality (both racial and gender-based). We cannot unsettle this status quo and thus conceptualize transformation without interrogating the often-overlooked actors, institutions, and norms that have been highlighted by African feminisms.
Acknowledgements
The author is grateful to Yolande Bouka, Amy Niang, Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso, and the editors of and contributors to this symposium for their very helpful feedback on earlier drafts of the article.
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