Jonathan Fisher and Nina Wilén, in their informative book African Peacekeeping (2022), make a valuable contribution to readers interested in international peacekeeping in Africa and globally. The book focuses on “peacekeeping by Africans” (p. 3) and explores African states as actors in peacekeeping operations and the implications of this to relationships amongst other African states. It also surfaces the relationships of these African peacekeeping actors with other non-African parties like multilateral organizations such as the United Nations and other states that play varied roles in peacekeeping operations around the world. It harnesses the vast and rich research experiences of both scholars and draws its analysis from empirical materials collected over time and from various relevant actors both in and outside of Africa. It is a timely book, as the authors acknowledge that African countries are sending more peacekeeping troops in various war contexts around the world, including within Africa (p. 2).

The book is well structured, and the arguments in each chapter are well linked to each other. There is ample evidence from a wide range of research on peacekeeping and also from other relevant scholarly literature in politics for instance. Readers will appreciate the introductory chapters that provide a chronological analysis of the evolution of African Peacekeeping and the other sections that are organized in well-articulated themes.

Fisher and Wilén provide two compelling arguments concerning their approach and analysis. The first, and the one that readers will find both compelling and innovative, examines how traumatic colonial legacies remain one of the important factors that influence “undemocratic and unaccountable culture” (p. 31) in certain aspects of contemporary militaries across the continent. Chapter 1 therefore offers a much welcome contribution to the study of international peacekeeping in Africa, a long-term perspective that goes beyond framing African peacekeeping story to the post–Cold War period. The data presented on the overview of African peacekeeping is informative and is analyzed in the introduction and chapter 1.

The second argument is equally compelling, presenting evidence to examine how African states’ participation in peacekeeping operations informs domestic and foreign policy and shapes relationships amongst African countries and with the outside world. In chapter 2 examples are given of Uganda as “one of a number of African states which have successfully leveraged extensive and enduring support from major powers” (p. 80) in the fight against terrorism. Many other cases analyzed in this chapter provide evidence of these strategic partnerships that have influenced how international peacekeeping operations have evolved in past decades and influenced foreign policy interests of African states and other actors. The examples provided in chapter 5 on professional development courses and other trainings offered by wealthy countries show how the benefits go beyond the states to impact positively individual soldiers’ careers who risk their lives on the ground when deployed. The analysis of the dynamics of African peacekeepers, for instance in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide, is informative and is a welcome addition to other scholarly works that have recently explored this period (Reggers, Rosoux, and Mwambari, “In Memory of Peacekeepers: Belgian Blue Helmets and Belgian Politics,” International Peacekeeping 29 [2], 2022).

The reader will also find that each chapter can be read on its own, given that there are clear arguments and a rich analysis of various players in peacekeeping. In chapter 4, for instance, the authors provide a holistic examination of the contradictions of the African Union’s (AU’s) identity as it is influenced, on the one hand, by “key documents, like the charter” (p. 130) for the Africa Peace and Security Architecture (APSA) and, on the other hand, practices that are based on competing national interests. In developing such analysis, the book revisits and connects to old debates in literature across disciplines on the choice between the AU and regional organizations that continues to produce multiple identities on the continent instead of unity. In this context the authors show how states such as Nigeria continue to organize peacekeeping operations through Regional Economic Communities (RECs) like the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) instead of on the African Union or the UN level to sustain its influence as a hegemonic power within the western African region. In this chapter, as is the case in chapter six, the authors brilliantly elevate the analysis of African peacekeeping from state level to continental level.

The reader will find the comparative approach to examining how peacekeeping decisions inform practices that result in tensions at the national, regional, and international levels, valuable for analyzing the recent politics of peacekeeping in Mozambique. The deployment of peacekeepers in Mozambique provides an example that deepens the argument regarding multiple identities that the authors make in chapter 4. Mozambique, based on its own national interests, invited Rwandan peacekeepers on a bilateral basis in July 2021, but without mandate from the AU or the United Nations. In addition, both Mozambique and Rwanda acted against advice from leaders of Southern African Development Community (SADC) to start the mission alone without SADC peacekeeping mission. As the authors argue, it is such decisions that result in the tensions between “Africrats” (p. 133)—the AU’s bureaucrats who formulate sound peace and security policies in the headquarters in Addis Ababa—and political elites that exercise their power whenever such operations advance various interests, even when it results in ignoring the AU and UN policies on peacekeeping (p. 134).

While it is clear that the book makes an important contribution to knowledge on African peacekeeping and politics around international peacekeeping more generally, there are some missed opportunities that readers might note. For instance, the deliberate decision not to include analysis on the Northern African states prevents the book from providing a holistic understanding of “African peacekeeping.” Although the authors mention the complex debate around the separation of this region from the other African regions (p. 6), and other works exist that acknowledge the leadership dilemma in the region (Radwa Saad, “Reconciling Pan-Arabism and Pan-Africanism: The North African Leadership Dilemma,” Leadership and Development Societies 3[1], 2018), Fisher and Wilén could have included the Northern countries’ contributions to peacekeeping, especially because there are parts of the book where it is obvious that these states play important roles in peacekeeping. The authors acknowledge this role in different historical periods. For example, three of the Big Five who funded the AU were Algeria, Egypt, and Libya, the others being South Africa and Nigeria (p. 132). These states hold a great deal of power and influence in the African peacekeeping enterprise, and that requires analysis. In addition, it would have been interesting for the reader if the book further unpacked the relatively recent phenomenon of African women in peacekeeping, especially in African peacekeeping missions and how their various gendered roles reveal the nature of African peacekeeping in the twenty-first century.

Even with these gaps, the book is a highly engaging and informative read for academics, practitioners, and policy makers. There is a need for further analysis that takes African Peacekeeping seriously, like this book has done. It has opened up opportunities for future work to explore the significance that African countries have on domestic and foreign policies of countries on the African continent, and global security more broadly.