Africa and International relations

Introduction

It has become rather commonplace to read that, what is referred to as ‘traditional, western IR theory’, is problematic when taken to the African continent. At best, we are told, ‘IR theory’ misrepresents or misunderstands African reality, at worst it participates in an exercise of neo-colonial theoretical hegemony. The claimed inappropriateness of traditional IR to the African experience thus reinforces the marginalisation of the continent in the international system with a marginalisation within the discipline.1 In this article I will seek to both assess this ‘Africanist critique’2 and to mount something of a qualified defence of IR theory. However, I argue that some clarification and rethinking is necessary for us to get a proper perspective on the potentialities of IR in studies of Africa. In this regard I make three related points. First, that we need to be clear that what is under attack is neorealism and not some generic body of ‘IR theory’. Second, by differentiating neorealism’s specific approach

* An earlier version of this article was presented at the BISA annual conference, London, LSE, 16–18 December 2002.
1 Kevin C. Dunn, ‘Introduction: Africa and International Relations Theory’, in Kevin C. Dunn, andTimothy M. Shaw (eds.), Africa’s Challenge to International Relations Theory (Basingstoke:Palgrave, 2001), pp. 1–8.
2 I use the label ‘Africanist critique’, inadequate as it is, to characterise this group of critics wholoosely share some common critical analyses of IR theory and who include scholars of Africa basedin the West as well as African IR scholars. I realise that some might object to the term ‘Africanist’,though I am at a loss to think of an alternative label. I certainly do not mean to imply by this thatall ‘Africanists’ – analysts of Africa – would share these critics’ views on IR.

it is possible to see not just the limitations of that approach, but the potential of other theoretical approaches within IR. Finally, by exploring the concepts of the state and anarchy I argue that the critics in fact maintain neorealism’s conceptualisations, simply inverting the picture. I argue that this represents a theoretical step backwards. Of necessity, the centre of gravity of this article is one of debunking (or at least a partial debunking) of what I argue is a misdirected critique. However, I endeavour to offer some illustrative examples to demonstrate the potential relevance of other approaches within IR once one moves beyond the constraints of neorealism. The problems of theories of IR do not simply appear when one moves one’s focus to Africa, they are there to begin with.
The idea that ‘Western’ social theory is inappropriate to understanding the non-Western world is hardly new or novel, although the variant of this critique which focuses on the relationship between Africa and IR theory has only fairly recently come to prominence. Kevin Dunn and Timothy Shaw’s volume Africa’s Challenge to International Relations Theory3 is an important marker in the debate although the contributions to Stephanie Neuman’s earlier collection International Relations Theory and the Third World cover many shared ideas.4
The criticisms of ‘traditional’ or ‘western’ IR5 that I am concerned with operate on a number of levels but perhaps the most general idea is an assertion that traditional IR theory, and the models of the international system which it uses, when taken to the African continent, fail to explain much about the continent’s international relations, nor help us understand the key problems and issues which are deemed to be central to Africa’s international politics. This misapplication of theory means that ‘. . . the dominant IR theories [are] not adequate in explaining what was actually happening on the African continent . . ’.6 The claimed results are several. One is that Africa is simply ignored in mainstream IR discussions. Nkiwane maintains that ‘. . . the ‘‘canon’’ of international relations has been consistent in its dismissal of Africa’.7 To illustrate the point, Kevin Dunn asserts that Antarctica gets more of a mention than Africa in many undergraduate IR courses.8 There would indeed be something awry if the analytical models used by the discipline meant that Antarctica, as the only large piece of territory not the property of a sovereign state, can show

3 Kevin C. Dunn and Timothy M. Shaw (eds.), Africa’s Challenge to International Relations Theory(Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001).
4 Stephanie G. Neuman (ed.), International Relations Theory and the Third World (London:Macmillan, 1998). Others include Siba N. Grovogui, ‘Regimes of Sovereignty: InternationalMorality and the African Condition’, European Journal of International Relations, 8:3 (2002),pp. 315–38; Larry A. Swatuk, ‘The Brothers Grim: Modernity and ‘‘International’’ Relations inSouthern Africa’, in Kevin C. Dunn and Timothy M. Shaw (eds.), Africa’s Challenge toInternational Relations Theory (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 163–82; Tandeka, C. Nkiwane,‘Africa and International Relations: Regional Lessons for a Global Discourse’, InternationalPolitical Science Review, 22:3 (2001), pp. 279–90; and Cirino, H. Ofuho, ‘The Legitimacy andSovereignty Dilemma of African States and Governments: Problems of Colonial Legacy’, in Bakuttswah Bakut and Sagarika Dutt (eds.), Africa at the Millennium: An Agenda for MatureDevelopment (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2000), pp. 103–25.
5 The prefixes vary between ‘traditional’, ‘orthodox’, ‘western’, ‘northern’ and ‘Eurocentric’, but allimply a definite and identifiable body of theory or ‘received wisdom’ in the discipline. As I go onto argue, precisely which parts of existing IR theory are being attacked is in fact rarely madesufficiently explicit.
6 See Kevin C. Dunn, ‘Tales from the Dark Side: Africa’s Challenge to International RelationsTheory’, Journal of Third World Studies, 17:1 (2000), pp. 61–2.
7 Nkiwane, ‘Africa and International Relations’, p. 280.
8 Dunn, ‘Introduction: Africa and IR Theory’, p. 2; also Dunn, ‘Tales from the Dark Side’.

students something fundamental about the nature of the anarchic international system, that Africa, home to some 800 million people, cannot. Another claimed result is that when Africa is analysed it is misinterpreted through highly suspect conceptual lenses that try to squeeze an ‘African reality’ into ‘European’ models. The seemingly obvious misfit of the latter produces analyses and concepts – such as failed, or quasi-states – which it is claimed conceptually and theoretically marginalise the continent from the mainstream. Africa becomes the subordinated ‘other’ to the western ‘self’.9 Such marginalisation is reinforced by the professed focus of many of the most influential writings in IR on the great powers. Ayoob goes as far as to claim that ‘. . . both neorealism and neoliberalism share a neocolonial epistemology that privileges the global North over the global South . . .’.10
Although a variety of different specific criticisms about IR theory are made in these contributions, the core of the problem is claimed to be that the conceptual basis of IR theory is the product of Western experience and is therefore inapplicable to Africa, and as a result, IR theory fails to acknowledge the historical specificity of the African experience – analyses of Africa are produced by ‘reading through’ European history. The argument is encapsulated by Neuman who writes:
Even central concepts such as anarchy, the state, sovereignty, rational choice, alliance and the international system are troublesome when applied to the third world . . . mainstream IR theory . . . is essentially Eurocentric theory originating in the United States and founded, almost exclusively, on what happens or happened in the West.11

In a similar vein Dunn maintains that:

Africa’s pseudo absence in IR theory is exacerbated by the continued privileging of concepts that help maintain that invisibility. Basic concepts that are central to traditional IR – anarchy, sovereignty, the state, the market, the international/domestic dichotomy – become problematic, if not highly dubious, when applied to Africa. Rather than use African experiences to revise their theories, most IR scholars simply continue to ignore the
continent.12Lying behind many of these arguments is a concern with the differences between the emergence of the ‘Westphalian’ state system in Europe and the states system in Africa. Here, it is claimed that whereas in Europe, the state system emerged with an almost innate coherence between the boundaries of territorially-defined political authority and various other social groups and processes – nation, secularisation, religion, industrialisation and so forth – in Africa the formation of states was somehow more artificial.13 This artificiality, this imposition of an alien form of rule, it is argued, leads to the weakness or absence of the state in African societies today. A host of claims are then made about the ethnic diversity of the populations within African states, the ‘misfit’ between patterns of trade and state boundaries and the

9 Dunn,
‘Introduction: Africa and IR Theory’
, p. 3; also Swatuk, ‘The Brothers Grim’.
10 Mohammed Ayoob, ‘Subaltern Realism: International Relations Theory Meets the Third World’,in Stephanie G. Neuman (ed.), International Relations Theory and the Third World (London:Macmillan, 1998), p. 37.
11 Stephanie G. Neuman, ‘International Relations Theory and the Third World: An Oxymoron?’, inStephanie G. Neuman (ed.), International Relations Theory and the Third World, p. 2.
12 Dunn, ‘Introduction: Africa and IR Theory’, p. 4.
13 Assis Malaquias, ‘Reformulating International Relations Theory: African Insights and Challenges’,in Kevin C. Dunn and Timothy M. Shaw (eds.), Africa’s Challenge to International RelationsTheory (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), pp. 12–15.

seemingly consequent lack of control exercised by the state domestically. Where domestic sovereignty in the West is therefore presented as an unproblematic issue, providing the basis for theories of international relations, in Africa it is highly problematic rendering those theories useless. The historical experiences of the two continents here points to the need for difference to be recognised in the theories of the international that we use, and we are asked to look back to pre-colonial Africa to pinpoint the building blocks of new theoretical departures. In a manner reminiscent of Davidson,14 Ofuho argues that, ‘Long before the imposition of the state structure, the African peoples had their modes of organising society, which were phased out because the continent did not have any choice but to adopt the Westphalian structure designed by European powers in Berlin’.15 This meant it was ‘moulded in the European frame but lacked the ethnic or cultural congruence that most of Europe followed’.16 Or as Malaquias puts it, ‘. . . Africa’s political development in the pre-colonial era differed from the European experience in important respects. Therefore, attempts to explain uniquely African phenomena by using essentially European models are inadequate.’17 In such circumstances, to prioritise an IR theory based on European historical experience over analysis of a different African reality is to subordinate the study of Africa’s international relations to European experiences. Flowing from this questioning of statehood is a dismissal of a host of other elements of IR theory – the division between the domestic and the international, of hierarchy within and anarchy without, and of a clearly demarcated political realm of interaction between states.
The implications of these claims could in fact point in several directions. They could be read as a call for a refined conceptual basis for IR theories, which rethought the concepts of state, sovereignty, anarchy and the international, and which could produce models of international order based on different assumptions which are more flexible and historically open. It would be, in effect, a call for theoretical approaches which allow Africa to be analysed as a serious historical subject. In places this is what Dunn appears to be arguing for.18 However, the way in which both he and others frame their critique also seems to imply something different – not the further development of IR theory per se, but the development of new IR theories for Africa because it is Africa, not Europe or North America, which these authors tell us makes existing IR theories problematic. In this latter sense, the claim is not just that Africa be taken seriously analytically, but that this can only happen via a radical theoretical divorce from what are seen as oppressive Western ideas. Both options demand that we at least reconsider what is and is not assumed in our theoretical models of the international system, and on what units and relationships such models are built, as well as what our theories are for. However, the danger is that a total dismissal of the relevance of existing IR theories in Africa, while implicitly accepting their applicability to the developed world, risks undermining one of the chief aims of the critics (to challenge Africa’s marginalisation in the discipline of IR) by demarcating the continent into a relativist isolation. I will argue that we need not,

14 Basil Davidson, The Black Man’s Burden: Africa and the Curse of the Nation-state (London: JamesCurrey, 1992).
15 Ofuho, ‘Legitimacy and Sovereignty’, p. 106.
16 Ibid., p. 107.17 Malaquias, ‘Reformulating International Relations Theory’, p. 13.
18 Dunn, ‘Introduction: Africa and IR Theory’, p. 5.

and should not, go this far. Such a move misidentifies the problem being discussed. For, many of the issues which critics cite as problems of ‘IR theory’ in Africa, are in fact problems in IR theory wherever it is applied.
In what follows I will first make some general and fairly broad comments about some of the uses of theory in the study of international relations. I will then advance three lines of counter-critique to the challenge to IR theory: the historical narratives on which the critique of IR theory is based; the idea of statelessness in Africa; and the understandings and criticisms of the concept of anarchy. This falls somewhat short of a full defence of the applicability of ‘IR theory’ in Africa for, as I hope to show, IR theories are in some senses in question everywhere.

Theory and international relations

The case against ‘traditional IR’ is an important one as it presents a challenge to the discipline of IR, dominated as it is by scholars from the North Atlantic. It challenges its pretensions to be a discipline of the international as a whole, and to its existing efforts to provide theoretical frameworks within which to conceptualise and analyse different, and particularly non-Western and post-colonial regions of the international system. If theories of the international system are hidebound by the dominance of the North Atlantic, then of what use is the discipline to analysts of, and those living in, other parts of the world? However, as currently formulated, it is unclear in what direction critics would wish to see IR theory develop in order to meet the challenges they raise. In part, this lack of clarity is a result of the absence of any explicit consideration of what the uses of theories of international relations could or should be, nor of the relationship between abstract models of the international system and more focused, concrete analysis of particular issue areas or geographical regions within it. The bulk of this article will assess the rather more focused problems of history, anarchy and statehood which the critics raise. However, I will offer here a few broad, general, and incomplete considerations on the role of IR theory in analysing the international system.
The first point to make is that there needs, at times, to be a lowering of expectations as to what IR theories can do. Africanist critics of IR do not present any explicit discussion of the desired uses of IR theory, but implicitly their arguments appear to assume that for theory to be useful, a theoretical model should ‘look like’ the reality to which it relates. Because African reality doesn’t look very much like the images of international order received from the mainstream of the discipline, then the theories must be faulty: if IR theory presupposes functioning states and these don’t exist in parts of Africa, then the IR theory can’t apply; if IR theory is focused on relations between states, and there are international social processes crossing state borders that are in some sense non-state, then alternative theories are needed, and so on. There is indeed some mileage in this approach, but it is badly overstated.
The key problem with this starting point is that it risks mistaking theories for exact descriptions of reality. Given, as I argue below, that the critics’ main target is in fact neorealism, it is interesting to note that this very point is made by Waltz himself. Waltz argues that in constructing theories that seek to explain reality, the theory itself
is necessarily at some remove from reality and involves some necessary simplification of reality:
A theory is a picture, mentally formed, of a bounded realm or domain of activity. A theory is a depiction of the organization of the domain and of the connections among its parts . . . In reality everything is related to everything else, and one domain cannot be separated from others. Theory isolates one realm in order to deal with it intellectually . . . The question, as ever with theories is not whether the isolation of a realm is realistic, but whether it is
useful.19
Notwithstanding some caveats about Waltz’s methodology (introduced below), and without getting diverted into a more far-reaching methodological discussion, this seems a reasonable point to make. While theories of the international system should bear some relation to the reality of the subject matter (otherwise how can they be useful?) we cannot expect theories to include everything that we observe. Indeed, that is partly why theories are useful as well as why their usefulness is inherently limited: they reduce the complexity of the world in order to highlight certain important features above others, they rely on conceptual abstractions such as ‘state’ and ‘anarchy’ to refer to real aspects of the world but in a necessarily imperfect, generalised way. Theories then go on to identify relations among these elements based on limiting assumptions about the real world. They necessarily take some things for granted in order to explore others. The test of the usefulness of theory therefore lies more in questions such as whether the abstractions on which it is built generate interesting insights, whether it is a coherent formulation, whether the assumptions on which it is based are reasonable, whether it can explain significant issues, and whether it generates interesting hypotheses for future research. In this respect, theories are only ever starting points for analysis. We should not be surprised if neorealism fails to provide everything we need to know about west Africa, or western Europe for that matter. The question is, does it provide some useful insights? Of course, if the conceptual abstractions and assumptions on which a theory is built are so distant from what is known about a particular region, then its usefulness is commensurately more limited. Perhaps this is what the critics are getting at and I will come to whether this argument holds for two conceptual abstractions – the state and anarchy – in later sections. To claim that mainstream IR theory doesn’t account for all the actors, processes and interactions which occur in Africa, is rather to miss the point.
It is worth remarking here that I do not go along with those who argue that a specifically ‘international’ theory is redundant either due to a general process of ‘globalisation’ or, in African guise, of state collapse. As will be discussed further below, some discussions of African politics, particularly focusing on the state and state collapse, proceed as if all practical borders between the internal and the external had broken down. In such a circumstance, the role of any specifically ‘international’ theory would indeed come into question and international relations would ‘disappear into sociology’20 or some kind of global social studies. If, following Justin Rosenberg,21 international relations refers, in its most general abstraction, to

19 Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: Random House, 1979), p. 8.
20 The phrase is from Justin Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society: a Critique of Realist Theory ofInternational Relations (London: Verso), p. 46.
21 Justin Rosenberg, The Follies of Globalisation Theory: Polemical Essays (London: Verso, 2000),pp. 65–85.

relations between politically-organised societies, then I see no reason to doubt its continuing relevance in either the African or global context. While this definition does indeed reaffirm the centrality of the political, it neither necessitates a radical separation between the internal and the external, nor between the political and other – economic, cultural, ideational – aspects of social life in any particular histori­cal example. If we thus define ‘international system’ as referring to more or less regularised patterns of political, economic, cultural interaction between coexisting politically organised societies, then the question of what might be included in theoretical formulations or models of the international system, or sub-regions of it, comes to the fore.
The problem of how to define the pertinent content of any particular international system has been addressed by Buzan and Little who have provided us with a useful framework.22 Because they are concerned to define an approach to international systems which is open enough to encompass a wide historical range of different systems, Buzan and Little’s is an approach which is particularly relevant to my current discussion of critics who argue that African international relations are somehow different from the Western norm. I do not need to go into Buzan and Little’s framework in any depth for the purposes of the current discussion, suffice to note that it endeavours to encompass a range of ‘levels’ (systems, units, subunits); a range of ‘sectors’ within which systems might be said to exist (military, political, economic, sociocultural and environmental); and a range of sources of explanation (processes, interaction capacity and structures). With this toolkit, it is argued, a wide array of different historical systems can be analysed. Put in terms of the above discussion, there is a wide range of aspects of reality which can be selected in order to construct theories and models of different systems of international relations.
Two key points flow from this. First, it becomes obvious that some kind of international theory which can offer useful explanations of Africa’s international politics is at least possible. Even if we were to accept the critics’ claim that the traditional focus of ‘Western’ IR on states and anarchy is misplaced, alternative constructions of a theory of the international for Africa should be possible focusing on ethnic groupings as ‘units’, for example, or transboundary migration

as ‘process’. In contrast to those who argue that there is almost no discernible international dimension at all, other critics, such as Dunn, seem to imply that some kinds of political organisation remain, just that they are not like Western states. The implica­tion of this latter argument is either that Africa would be seen to be removed from the modern, state-based, Western international system into some kind of system or sub-system of its own, or that our conceptualisations of the modern Western system need to be made considerably more complex and all-encompassing to accommodate African difference. I will argue below that I think we only need to go part way down this road, although such opening up may also carry with it an explanatory price.
Second, these considerations, and Buzan and Little’s framework, also highlight the fact that what is being criticised is not some single, generic body of thought called ‘western IR theory’, but actually one approach within it – neorealism. It soon becomes clear that when critics argue that IR theory is inadequate for Africa – because it focuses on states and not other actors, that it limits itself to interstate
22 Barry Buzan and Richard Little, International Systems in World History: Remaking the Study of International Relations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).

relations
and ignores other transnational processes, or that it operates as if there were no connection between what goes on within states and what goes on between them – they are actually talking about neorealism and not some of the other theoretical approaches in the IR canon which question some or all of these dimensions of realism. In discussions of IR theory and Africa, this fact is too often hidden behind reference to a target labelled ‘western IR theory’ as if that were a single, unified body of work. In this the critics are in fact accepting neorealism’s hegemonic claims within the discipline. It should hardly need saying that ‘western IR theory’ amounts to rather more than this. While Rosenberg may be right to argue that because realism sits on the political foundations of international relations ‘there is no way beyond realism by going around it’, this does not mean we have to accept its transhistorical claims, nor its overly limiting assumptions.23 Other theoretical approaches, all with their own traditional, Western credentials, remain very much in the game.
We might make one further note here. Consideration of critical social theories alerts us to the fact that the selection and construction of theories, and their impact in the real world, is never an entirely neutral or value-free exercise.24 Implicit in the Africanist critique is an idea that ‘western IR’ helps to reinforce Western dominance in the international system through, for example, aid donors’ insistence on the adoption of particular political reforms in Africa, centred on Western conceptions of the nation state. It is perhaps one of the more laudable aims of the Africanist critique to seek to break free from what are perceived as self-serving Western theoretical constructions and to open up discussion of alternative political futures for the continent. This aim is most explicit in Davidson’s writing.25 However, I will argue below that we should retain a strong dose of scepticism as to whether an analytical or normative focus on the non-state (whether that be ‘ethnic’ identifications or ‘warlord’ political formations) really offers a viable or desirable way past the state, although a questioning of an exclusive focus on the state as established fact certainly is useful. In addition, once one moves away from neorealist assumptions of statehood to a more relational understanding, a greater opening up of the potential for change becomes possible in any case.26
In the following sections I am going to take issue with two of the claims which are used to reject traditional (that is, realist) IR theory – statehood and anarchy – and argue that a recognisable theory of international politics can still be a valuable starting point for analysis of Africa’s international relations. However, first I want to offer some comments on the damage to historical understanding to which this misuse of theory leads.

23 Rosenberg, Follies of Globalisation Theory.
24 Craig Calhoun, Critical Social Theory: Culture, History, and the Challenge of Difference (Oxford:Blackwell, 1995); Robert Cox, ‘Social Forces, States and World Orders: Beyond InternationalRelations Theory’, Millennium, 10:2 (1981), pp. 126–55; Andrew Linklater, ‘The Achievements ofCritical Theory’, in Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski (eds.), International Theory:Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 279–98.
25 Davidson, The Black Man’s Burden.
26 The highly circumscribed scope for social change allowed for in Realism limits the extent to whichit can be viewed as a critical theory – a comment which does not apply to other ‘western’approaches such as Liberalism and Marxism. Simon Bromley and Mark Smith, ‘TransformingInternational Order?’, in William Brown, Simon Bromley and Suma Athreye (eds.), Ordering theInternational: History, Change and Transformation (London: Pluto Press in association with theOpen University, 2004), pp. 523–68.

Essentialising histories

In implicitly assuming that theoretical models of international relations can provide accurate, detailed descriptions of the real world of international relations, rather than simplified metaphors of reality to be used as a starting point for analysis, the critics of traditional IR are guilty of gross misrepresentations of history. Indeed, perhaps one of the most glaring inadequacies of the ‘Africanist critique’ of IR theory is the historical parallel which it uses to promulgate its argument. Far from using the contrasting and complex histories of European and African participation in the international system as a way to open up avenues to a more historically-oriented theory of the international, the critique actually ‘essentialises’ both European and African history.
The first essentialisation relates to the claimed compatibility of notions of the state and state system taken directly from realist theory with the actual historical reality of state formation and interaction in Europe. For the claim that IR theory is inapplicable in Africa in fact accepts with a breathtaking complacency the idea that such abstractions easily accord with the European experience and shows a grossly oversimplified portrayal of Europe. While it may indeed be correct to argue, like Dunn, that to take an ‘unproblematised’ notion of the state and hold it up to African reality will necessarily produce a distorted picture, the implication is that this is not so in the case of Europe.27 Apparently, the Westphalian ideal, ‘. . . worked well for Europe . . .’.28 As I have noted above, the assumption is that in Europe there was some kind of simple, natural affinity between the emerging nation-states and the communities, cultures, identities and territories around which they were constructed. The history of the European states system, and the scholarly debates within and without IR about it, show this notion to be absurd. Yet it goes almost unremarked that the complex reality of the European states system might raise questions about the formulation and use of theories of international relations which take states for granted, as if these problems only arise when the apparently more difficult issue of Africa is addressed.
Indeed, in this respect, the critique of IR seemingly ignores the very real debates about the origins and nature of the European states system and the place within it of the Peace of Westphalia, and of the social processes of war, revolution, industrialis­ation, modernisation and capitalist transition which accompanied and shaped state formation.29 A passing knowledge of the history would alert us to the fact that the Western state has neither been ‘unproblematic’ nor ‘taken for granted’ at virtually

27 Kevin Dunn, ‘MadLib #32: The (Blank) African State: Rethinking State Sovereignty inInternational Relations Theory’, in Kevin C. Dunn and Timothy M. Shaw (eds.), Africa’s Challengeto IR Theory, p. 55.
28 Malaquias, ‘Reformulating International Relations Theory’, p. 15.
29 There are too many possible citations here. To get an idea of the range of debates, an eclecticselection might include: Paul Corrigan and Derek Sayer, The Great Arch: English State Formationas Cultural Revolution (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985); Eric J. Hobsbawm, Nations and Nationalism Since1780: Programme, Myth, Reality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991); Stephen D.Krasner, ‘Rethinking the Sovereign State Model’, Review of International Studies, 27 Special Issue(December 2001), pp. 17–42; Gianfranco Poggi, The Development of the Modern State: aSociological Introduction (London: Hutchinson, 1978); John G. Ruggie, Constructing the WorldPolity: Essays on International Institutionalization (London: Routledge, 1998); Benno Teschke TheMyth of 1648: Class, Geopolitics and the Making of Modern International Relations (London: Verso,2003); Ellen Meiksins Wood, The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (London: Verso, 2002).

any point in its history. It is perhaps useful to remind oneself that what might be taken for granted as the ‘European state system’ today was, as recently as 1945, in a condition of near total collapse. Indeed, the rebuilding of it involved the creation of entirely novel forms of international political, economic and security apparatuses – the EU, NATO, Warsaw Pact and Communist bloc, and the like – which themselves do not easily fit into received theories of IR, as the debates over the nature of these very institutions amply shows. The characterisation of traditional IR which is offered by the Africanist critique would be pretty limited in explaining much about international relations anywhere in the world, including North America and Europe.
The second essentialism is the other side of this coin, that is, an ‘African reality’ which is contrasted with the ‘western ideal’. Thus while European history is essentialised as fitting the ideal types offered by IR theory, African history is portrayed as essentially different from them. While it is unquestionably correct to point out that the African situation was and is different to Europe, this is hardly news. What is much more problematic – and requires a good deal more justification than it receives in much of the literature – is to argue that there is something so essentially different about Africa in the modern world as to make core concepts like the state (which may indeed originate in Western thought) irrelevant. That is, not only is it claimed that there are contradictions and conflicts around and arising from state formation in Africa, and that the easy use of distinctions such as domestic and international is problematic, but that these will not, indeed cannot, be overcome and statehood, and the associated concepts used by realism and other IR theories which flow from it, are therefore redundant.
Joining these two essentialisations, many of the critics operate with a simplistic notion of a one-way process of imposition of the Western ideal-state onto Africa as if Africans themselves had little to do with it. Thus: ‘The state-centric model . . . worked well for Europe [while] the grafting of the Westphalian system onto Africa brought war and conflict . . .’ because it ‘represented European ideas, not the wishes and aspirations of African peoples’.30 Or as Dunn puts it, ‘African states had no authorship in the construction of the international state system . . . The international system was born in Westphalia and exported across the globe by Western coloniz­ation and hegemony.’31 In fact, not only was the course of colonisation shaped by the interaction between Africans and Europeans32 but decolonisation and the foundation of independent states was a process in which Africans were actors, not simply acted upon.33 The critics’ account also grossly over-simplifies the complex processes which have gone to shape the international system. It is as if the basic structure of the system was erected in seventeenth century Europe and has remained untouched and unchanged by the passing years of war, revolution, social transformation, state collapse and formation, international expansion and revolt.34

30 Malaquias, ‘Reformulating International Relations Theory’, p. 15.
31 Dunn, ‘Tales from the Dark Side’, pp. 66–7.
32 See Ronald Robinson, John Gallagher and Alice Denny, Africa and the Victorians: The OfficialMind of Imperialism (London: Macmillan, 1970).
33 For example, see Tony Chafer’s excellent history, The End of Empire in French West Africa:France’s Successful Decolonization? (Oxford: Berg, 2002).
34 With respect to the charge of ignoring Africa, it is worth noting here that some strands of‘traditional IR’ such as the English School have in fact given the changes in the internationalsystem around the expansion of statehood a great deal of attention. See for example, Hedley Bulland Adam Watson (eds.), The Expansion of International Society (Oxford: Clarendon).

Finally, and perhaps most surprisingly, the critique in fact fails to achieve one of its key aims – to undermine the marginalisation of Africa in IR. The double act of a portrayal of Europe as essentially in accord with received theories, and of an African reality which is essentially different, cannot help but to exoticise Africa and only widens the gulf between the IR mainstream and Africanist writings. The theoretical pluralism hinted at by Dunn is all very well, but if it leaves ‘traditional IR’ untouched in its North Atlantic heartland and emphasises its non-applicability to Africa, then it is unlikely to garner any greater attention to the continent in mainstream IR teaching or theory. Indeed, Africa will be left outside of such scholarly arenas in a relativist isolation, dismissed as it so often is, as ‘devoid of meaningful politics’. As Mahmood Mamdani put it in a slightly different context, both the uncritical adherence to ‘western’ universals and the assertion of an essential African particularism leaves both Europe and Africa ‘robbed of their history’.

Health In Africa

"28 Stories of AIDS in Africa:"

About 5,500 people died in sub-Saharan Africa yesterday—about one and a half times the number of American troops killed since the invasion of Iraq—and few people in the United States noticed.
The killer wasn’t a war or famine or natural disaster but rather a virus the shape of a spiky basketball which hijacked its victims’ DNA, replicated itself and then destroyed the host’s immune system.
The killer was AIDS, and it will kill 5,500 more Africans today. And tomorrow. And every day for the foreseeable future. The scourge of the disease and its precursor virus, HIV, is destroying lives, families, communities and countries. The disease’s effect on everyday people is the subject of Stephanie Nolen’s book, 28 Stories of AIDS in Africa, a group of profiles written by the reporter for Toronto’s Globe and Mail newspaper.
The pandemic has all but disappeared from today’s media. One reason seems to be the so-called “AIDS fatigue”—simply put, Americans are tired of reading about the disease. Dying with AIDS is a gruesome way to die, and it doesn’t make good reading or fun watching.
Also, living with HIV/AIDS in the West has become not much different than living with a chronic disease. The development of antiretroviral drugs—which can arrest the spread of HIV or AIDS but don’t cure it—is one of the most underappreciated and remarkable breakthroughs in medicine in decades.
Many countries are offering free or subsidized ARVs—but the drugs are hard to come by in the area with the highest rates of infection: sub-Saharan Africa.
The decreasing interest abroad and a sense of horror after witnessing a group of Tanzanian men wasting away with the virus is why Nolen chose to focus her efforts on reporting HIV/AIDS.
And why 28 stories? According to the United Nations’ AIDS organization, 28 million of the estimated 39.5 million people in the world living with the disease live in Africa.
The book’s profiles can be heartbreaking or inspiring—or sometimes both at the same time. One such case is Lefa Khoele, a 12-year-old Basotho boy born with HIV who has been too sick to take his year-end school exams, so he’s stuck in a class with 7-year-olds. Still, he makes the best of things—he’s learning gardening, and his ambition isn’t dimmed by the disease.
There’s Mohammed Ali, a Kenyan trucker who frequently purchased the services of prostitutes on his routes. After testing positive, he changed his behavior: no sex with his wife (who is HIV-negative) or prostitutes. No more cigarettes or drinking. He believes the disease will kill him, “but everybody dies one day,” he said.
And there’s Cynthia Leshomo, who won the Miss HIV Stigma-Free beauty contest in Gabarone, Botswana, and is trying to break social taboos.
The most famous person profiled in this book is Nelson Mandela. South Africa’s first post-apartheid president announced two years ago that his final surviving son, Makgatho Mandela, had died of AIDS-related diseases.
The power of the announcement can’t be overstated. Mandela was the glue that kept the “Rainbow Nation” from fracturing into race-based warfare after the first all-race elections in 1994. He’s the only politician respected among almost all races, classes and political affiliations. And then he announced AIDS had affected the Mandela family, too.
“The admission that AIDS had touched them, too, made it all a bit more normal, a bit less shameful,” Nolen writes.
It’s difficult to figure out if the war on HIV/AIDS is being won. Various groups give mixed signals. One example: Siphiwe Hlophe founded a successful grass-roots AIDS awareness and treatment group in Swaziland, but the country’s King Mswati III, Africa’s last ruling monarch, is a polygamist who chooses a new wife each year. He’s up to 13 wives.
South Africa transmits the most conflicting messages. Mandela, now a vocal advocate for increased HIV/AIDS funding and treatment, was largely silent about the disease while in office.
Mandela’s successor, Thabo Mbeki, has called AIDS a disease of the poor and defended a group of scientists who allege HIV does not cause AIDS. He’s criticized the West for its portrayal of the pandemic in Africa, saying reporters buy into the stereotype that Africans are savage and unable to control their bodies.
His health minister, Manto Tshabalala-Msimang, has promoted a diet rich in vegetables as a traditional cure for the virus. After much domestic and international fury over her statements, she’s modified it—now she says the best cure is a diet and antiretroviral drugs.
Yet despite this sharp rise in boneheadedness at the top of Africa’s richest and most industrialized nation, there are positive signs. Mbeki’s Cabinet forced the president to accept South Africa’s use of antiretroviral drugs, and it commanded Tshabalala-Msimang to develop a way to distribute them free to those who can’t afford them. The president has backed off his previous comments, and his health minister is fading away from the political scene because of health concerns.
The drug rollout program is under way, but only reaches 250,000 of the 5 million infected in South Africa. Within five years, Pretoria hopes ARVs will reach 80 percent. But the stigma remains: Most people do not want to be tested or acknowledge the disease.
These are the obstacles in Africa’s richest nation. Cross the borders into some of its neighbors—Lesotho, Swaziland, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Namibia—and suddenly the poverty rate skyrockets and the infection rate increases.
These countries often can’t afford to give away ARVs.
Every day, Nolen reminds us at the end of her book, 5,500 people in Africa die of AIDS-related diseases. More are infected every day. Therefore, she writes, “we have twenty-eight million reasons to act.”

"Africa wants DDT:"

Sam Zaramba, head of health services in Uganda, in an op-ed (subscription required) campaigns for a wider use of Dichloro-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane (DDT) as a preventative against malaria:
The United States and Europe eradicated malaria by 1960, largely with the use of DDT. At the time, Uganda tested the pesticide in the Kanungu district and reduced malaria by 98%. Despite this success, we lacked the resources to sustain the program. Rather than partner with us to improve our public health infrastructure, however, foreign donors blanched. They used Africa's lack of infrastructure to justify not investing in it.
The exercise pays for itself. With 90% fewer people requiring anti-malarial medication and other public-health resources, more healthy adults work and more children attend school.
Although Uganda's National Environmental management Authority has approved DDT for malaria control, Western environmentalists continue to undermine our efforts and discourage G-8 governments from supporting us.
The World Health Organization officially endorsed the practice last year.

"Bringing Back the Sex into HIV/AIDS Work in Africa:"

It's not a revealing discovery that sexual engagement with multiple partners increases the likelihood of getting some kind of an infection, HIV included. But this is increasingly getting attention as HIV/AIDS workers and researchers grapple with a ballooning epidemic in sub-Saharan Africa, where just 12 percent of men and 10 percent of women know their HIV status. More than anything else, it shows the lack of integration of HIV/AIDS and sexual reproductive health that is characteristic of many programs in Africa.
For example, over the past few years the term "small house" has gained currency in Zimbabwe, a country with 18 percent HIV prevalence rate among the 15 to 49 age group. Small house simply refers to the extra-marital affairs that married men or women have in secret.
"Small houses are a form of concurrent relationship in which a person is having regular sexual relations with another person, while at the same time continuing to have sex with their current primary sexual partner," says Lois Chingandu, Executive Director of Southern Africa HIV and AIDS Information Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS) in an ongoing electronic forum discussion on accelerating-prevention measures in Zimbabwe.
Usually, such relationships often include a powerful element of sexual-economic exchange. Because of women's subordinate economic status, they often enter into the relationships for financial gain, making themselves vulnerable to HIV infection. Also, in many African countries, cultural and traditional practices encourage multiple partnerships for men. Like in many societies around the world, men's sense of masculinity is often associated with sexual prowess.
"Researchers increasingly attribute the resilience of HIV in Botswana—and in southern Africa generally—to the high incidence of multiple sexual relationships," reports The Washington Post. "Europeans and Americans often have more partners over their lives, studies show, but sub-Saharan Africans average more at the same time."
While it's clearly a fallacy to say such partnerships are unique to sub-Saharan Africa, they do indeed facilitate the transmission of HIV because of other reasons.
"The fact is that concurrent sex or small houses are a key driver of the epidemic for a number of reasons: people do not know their status when they engage in sex; condom use is zero in these relationships, despite high HIV awareness levels; mutual fidelity is very rare; small houses are themselves driven by other drivers like power dynamics and gender inequality, which make it difficult for women on both sides of the relationship to demand protection, even when they know they are at risk," says Chingandu.
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that sub-Saharan Africa alone accounts for 65 percent of all new HIV infections. The primary transmission of HIV is through heterosexual contact.
The catch, however, is that most of the people who are infected, do not know that they are HIV-positive. Reducing the number of partners is key to HIV prevention, but must be promoted alongside the provision of other services—such as HIV testing, stigma reduction, access to treatment, and correct and consistent use of existing prevention methods.
In many parts of sub-Sahara Africa, HIV/AIDS lives in the shadow of silence, fear and death, and many people prefer not to know their status.
The UN estimates that nearly 80 percent of the people with HIV in poor and developing countries do not know they have it. In Africa alone, nearly 20 million people with HIV are not aware they have the virus.
The stigma associated with HIV/AIDS causes many people to shun HIV testing services.
And when people enter into a sexual relationship, they trust each other after a period of time to forgo protective measures, putting themselves at risk. The rate of the spread of the disease increases in the event of multiple concurrent sexual relationships.
Unfortunately, the AIDS response in Africa has largely steered away from matters of sex and sexuality. While there's a large amount of printed material on HIV and AIDS, it often ignores the heart of the matter: sex. NGOs, government and AIDS funders have concentrated efforts on alleviating the social manifestations of the disease. There's every justification to provide services to the affected populations, but equally important is the need to tackle often-taboo subjects associated with sex in wide-scale campaigns.
"Africans are overwhelmed with information on AIDS but not nearly enough that is useful," said The Washington Post's Craig Timberg, in a recent online chat with his readers.
If heterosexual contact is the main cause of the spread of the epidemic, it is imperative for African societies to start exploring the cultural, traditional, social, economic and political dynamics that define sexual behaviour, especially between men and women.
There's need to bring the sex back into HIV/AIDS work. Programs that promote safe sexual relations, even in multiple partnerships, need to be emphasized to harness the high rates of new infections.

"Good news about HIV at last?"

Until recently, the best estimates for the number of HIV+ Indians was 5.7 million, although estimates ranged from 3.4 million to 9.4 million. However, a new study puts the number of Indians with HIV/AIDS at roughly half of the previous estimate:

Early analysis of the figures suggests that India really has between two and three million victims, according to several sources, including American epidemiologists who know the data and the Health Ministry here.
The lower figure for India would imply that India has managed to keep its epidemic more like that of the United States, in that the virus circulates mostly within high-risk groups. In India’s case, these are prostitutes and their clients — especially truckers; men who have sex with men; and people who inject drugs, especially in the northeast, on the borders with Myanmar.

The big improvement in the quality of the numbers comes from the third National Family Health Survey:

The third National Family Health Survey was a gigantic exercise in logistics. Research organizations had to interview 124,385 women and 74,369 men in 3,849 villages and urban centers across India…. NFHS-3 was the first large scale nationwide survey to collect dried blood samples for HIV testing. Nearly 110,000 women and men were tested for HIV and more than 200,000 adults and young children were tested for anemia.

One surprise result of the new numbers- infection rates are much higher in the South than in the North:

But Ashok Alexander, director of Avahan, the Indian AIDS program of the Gates Foundation, says that while “it’s good news that overall the numbers are down, the real danger of this is it masks the real prevalence in one third of India: the south.” The study … found that infection rates in southern India are significantly higher than in the north of the country.

Two side points. First, HIV/AIDS advocacy groups are accused of having previously overstated the numbers in order to increase their own clout. I can see how they might have erred on the side of over-estimation, but the Gates Foundation was one of the groups that previously argued that the numbers were high and that the Indian government wasn’t doing enough, and which underwrote the comprehensive survey. That makes me think that the previous numbers were not just the result of projection by activists.
Second, I worry that people will make too much of Indian sexual fidelity and assume away the possibility that AIDS might still pose a serious threat:

Indians do not have the same kind of sexual networks that are common in southern and eastern Africa, in which both men and women often have two or more occasional but regular sexual partners over long periods of time. Also, outside of prostitution, “transactional sex” between teenage girls and older men in return for money, food or clothes is much less common in Asia than in Africa.

This is in fact true - Indians stress female virginity and there is little privacy, so it is harder for most people to have sex before or outside of marriage. Men do stray somewhat, but according to a friend who is an AIDS researcher, sexual double standards serve to limit spread of diseases in the population.

Over-stressing sexual behavior ignores other more important factors such as women’s sexual health. Emily Oster’s research argues that women’s poor sexual health is at the root of the epidemic in Africa:
… Africa has very high HIV transmission rates, likely due to high rates of other untreated sexually transmitted infections, while transmission rates in the United States are low. The difference in transmission rates is large enough to explain the observed difference in prevalence between the United States and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Oster argues strongly that differences between the US and Africa are caused by the fact that transmission rates are far higher in Africa and the epidemic started sooner. It’s really not about the number of sexual partners that Africans have. To make this point, she demonstrates that if Africa had transmission rates as low as the US, it would take superhuman levels of sexual activity to explain the epidemic. Basically, everybody would have to have far tremendously more sex than they do:
The results demonstrate that extremely large increases in sexual behavior would be necessary to produce the rate seen in Africa with the transmission rates from the developed world. One possible mechanism includes everyone having nonmarital sex (everyone has both premarital sex and extramarital sex in all periods), all women having an average of four nonmarital partners, and all men having an average of five nonmarital partners per year. Such a scenario involves sexual behavior that would have to be many times higher than in the reported DHS data.
If correct, then India should invest in female sexual health to keep rates of transmission low, rather than just relying on continued social pressures, especially since sexual mores are gradually changing. [If you’re interested, see Emily Oster’s webpage, she’s one of the top young economists today, and the author of the study I cited. Here’s a shorter less technical version of the paper cited above

Soccer (Football) in Africa

Become an African Football Aficionado
When traveling in Africa, start chatting about football (soccer) to any young African man and you'll establish an instant connection. Football in Africa is followed passionately from Morocco on down to South Africa. You'll know when an important football match is being played in Africa because the country you are visiting will literally come to a standstill. Everywhere you go in Africa you'll see young boys kicking around a football. Sometimes the ball will be made of plastic bags with string wrapped around it, sometimes it will be made of crumpled up paper. As long as it can be kicked, there will be a game.

How to Impress Your African Friends:

African Football Superstars

Familiarize yourself with the current African super stars of football. Some good names to drop would include: Austin 'Jay-Jay' Okocha (Nigeria), Samuel Eto'o Fils (Cameroon), Didier Drogba (Ivory Coast) and Obafemi Martins (Nigeria). This should impress and please most young men you talk to. General knowledge of other international football stars will also go down well.
European Football Clubs

Get to know the European football leagues. Every African player that's any good quickly find themselves being lured to Europe with the promise of more money and better training (some end up cleaning streets instead). Consequently Africans have to follow European football to get to see their own players. There are currently more than 1000 Africans playing for European clubs. The televised matches and the radio broadcasts from the European leagues is also of much better quality than anything broadcast locally. Plus Africans just enjoy a good game of soccer and it's played awfully well in Europe.
It's a Male Thing

Football is really a male thing in Africa. You won't see a lot of girls kicking a ball around in village. Nor will women be that interested in chatting about the latest European superstars. Women in Africa are usually too busy working while their men are watching or listening to football matches. But women's football is making some strides on the continent. There is an African Women's Championship held every 2 years which doesn't get a lot of publicity.
Witchcraft and Football

Don't comment on the use of witchcraft and football especially in sub-Saharan Africa, it's a bit of a sore point. If you get a chance to see a football match in a stadium you may be surprised to see teams urinating on the pitch or even slaughtering a goat. Witchcraft is a sensitive subject in Africa especially among the more educated people. Publicly witchcraft is often scorned as mere superstition but its use is still very widespread and to many Africans this is somewhat embarrassing. Hence you have football officials trying to stamp out the practice at least at the major tournaments.
Top African Teams and Their Nicknames

The top 5 African teams are: Nigeria (The Super Eagles), Cameroon (The Indomitable Lions), Senegal (The Lions of Teranga), Egypt (The Pharaohs) and Morocco (Lions of Atlas). Nigeria and Cameroon have a long standing football rivalry similar to that of Brazil and Argentina.

Upcoming football events:
World Cup 2006 will be held in Germany. The draw has taken place and the African nations are vying for first place in each of their groups to make it to world's most important football event.
Africa Cup of Nations 2006 was held in Egypt from January 20th to February 10th. The cup is held every two years. The 2004 winner was Tunisia, and the 2006 winner was Egypt.
Africa Champions League is an annual competition for African football clubs (as opposed to national teams). Not quite as popular as some of the European leagues but nationalism takes over during the finals which are held at the end of October and mid-November. The 2004 victor was Enyimba, a Nigerian club.
The Confederation Cup 2005 is a competition for the National Cup winner in each country. The finals take place in November.
World Cup 2010 will be held in South Africa and it's a really big deal for the continent. Many Africans felt that the world was finally respecting their ability to hold an event of this magnitude. Mandela was brought to tears on the news that South Africa won the right to host the event. If you are planning to visit South Africa around this time book your flight and hotel well in advance.
Colonial Football:
Around ball and a square goalSuggests the shape of the Yin and the Yang.The ball is like the full moon,And the two teams stand opposed:Captains are appointed and take their place.In the game make no allowance for relationshipAnd let there be no partiality.Determination and coolness are essentialAnd there must not be the slightest irritation for failure.Such is the game. Let its principles apply to life.Li Yu (50-130ad)
Just about every country in the world can trace through their history and find images of people playing with footballs. It has been discovered that Li Yu, when writing this peace of poetry, had written it to be placed on the goalposts. As you can imagine, he may not have been able to teach us about the intricate details of the latest edition of the Off-Side rule that FIFA have been playing with, but it should be noted that most countries had some form of sport in which people had a ball, a net and a few men running around. In Japan in the 5th century, people played Kemari. In Southern Africa, the San people played a kicking game on grass with a ball, in Greece, Episkyros was played mainly by children and women. In Native America in the 17th Century English pilgrims reported of people playing "Passuckquakkohowog", meaning 'those who gather to play football'.
Football has come in different forms from all around the world. In the town of Derby in England, Shrove Tuesday was a popular day, not for religious reasons but for a football match played between the parishes of St. Peter and All Saints. It was a game that was played to the bitter end, both teams giving all they had for the glory of their parish, this was later to become the birth of 'local derby', a phrase that has been used in every language in every country to describe the passion in a local game.
The first note of people playing football with regulated rules and guidelines can be tracked to the Normandy and Brittany area of France, a game called La Soule. This and Calcio, a form of football played in northern parts of Italy would be the oldest recorded forms of a game that would change the world. To this day changes have been made, some good, some bad and some really big decisions that FIFA are still pondering over, but football has always kept people watching, playing and adoring. The main stream of Football as we know it started in Cambridge in 1846, with a set of rules that had both handling and kicking rules, these were reformed in 1863 by the newly created Football Association. This started in London with 12 clubs, Barnes, Blackheath, Blackheath School, Charterhouse, Crusaders, Crystal Palace, Forest, Kensington School, No Names of Kilburn, Percival House, Surbiton and the War Office. From here on other forms of the sport were formed, Blackheath who split with the FA at the time went on to form what was known as Rugby Union. With the spread of these rules came the first FA Cup tournament. It was started in 1871 and finished in 1872 with Wanderers beating the Royal Engineers 1 - 0.
So to follow suit was the formation of a Football League. With only 12 teams deciding to take part the league it was a rather watered down event but the start of something big none the less. None of the teams that started the FA wanted to take place in the league and it was, Accrington Stanley, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rover, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Derby County, Everton, Notts County, Preston North End, Stoke City, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers to be the pioneers. Preston were the lucky winners of the first league season and soon enough other teams would follow to make the league what it is today.
From all this history more was to be made. When the industrial revolution took off in Great Britain people where looking for more ways to relax after a long hard days work. Football grew and grew within the islands but it was with the travel and work that British men went on that the game spread within Europe very quickly. Many of the teams we watch week in week out in the Champions league can be traced back to English steel workers, Ship builders, Miners, Railways workers and traders. It was an English group of people led by Alfred Edwards that created Milan FC, it was originally a cricket club and in 1908 members of the club that did not like the dominance it was under by English owners decided to make its own club, Internatzionale, or Inter Milan. Inter had a brief spell as a joint club with US Milanese and were called Ambrosiana-Inter, but changed back to Internatzionale and regained their position as a top club by coming Runner-up in 1949 to Torino. Inter and AC have been serious rivals ever since the split in 1908.In Spain, football was to grown by the influx of English Railway workers, Miners and expatriate traders. The first football only club, (others were athletic and cricket clubs), was Athletic Bilbao, an extraordinary club from the Basque region of Spain, it was founded by ship builders from Sunderland. The club was to take on the original colours of Sunderland, red and white stripes, and kept the name Athletic, and not the Spanish translation of Athletico as to honour the formation of the club. What makes the club so spectacular is that only people from the Basque region can play for them. Your mother or father must be from Bilbao or you could not play for them, it is a strict rule that they have stuck to ever since, and they have never been outside the top league in Spain, a trait that some teams have dropped, namely Barcelona.
All over main land Europe you will find stories very similar to these, from Holland and Belgium to Greece and Germany. People from all over the world have been responsible for the spread of this game, Irish priests bringing the game and the religion to Hibernian in Scotland, but who know which came first. English students from Oxford University bringing the foreign game to Germany but it was considered to be a foreign sport and was only played by the lower-class. During the Second World War it was banned and only after the ban was lifted did the sport take off.In France the game had spread with the same results, although we do have to be thankful for French football. France was the founding member of FIFA and its first president, Jules Rimet, was the founder of the World Cup. Also we must extend our gratitude to Gabriel Hunot who was the editor or the sports paper, L'Equipe, and the inspiration behind the European Cup, the now UEFA Champions League.
The flow of football can mean more than people travelling and bringing the game to other countries. It can be more than one team winning and another losing. It can be what shapes a country, what makes thousands of people spend millions of euros, and can make grown men cry. This can be said for Brazil in more ways than one, no other country has more people playing football, no other country can account for more World Cup Final Appearances, or Winners Medals. No other country can say that without football, the country would not be the same.
Brazil has been the home for Five World Cups, the home of the worlds best players, this country's only export bigger than football? Bananas! Brazil has had more players leave home and move to Europe than any other. They are the conveyor belt of football players. Over 350 players have moved to Europe from Brazil in the last 50 years. But the history of Brazilian football started with Charles Miller, a Brazilian born of English coffee-merchant parentage. He studied in Hampshire in England and when he returned to Brazil in 1894, he brought his love and passion for football back with him. He has been remembered by the Brazil football Association by naming the street that holds the Maracana after him. He is the reason that so many of us are engulfed in the style for football that Brazil gives us. The Brazilian National League was not formed until 1971, before then existed two city leagues, the Rio league and the Sao Paulo Championship. Both starting in and around the start of the 1900's, with an inter-city tournament starting in about 1930's.
Unfortunately Brazil was to be troubled by racial issues. There was a lot of teams that were only playing with white players, they had tried unsuccessfully in 1920 to form an all white league in Rio after Vasco de Gama had won the Rio Championship with a team of both black white and mixed races. Thankfully that has since gone from Brazil, with the emergence of foreign clubs buying the top players from Brazil and bringing them to Europe, the teams could not realistically continue with an all white league. Professionalism put the final nail in the coffin and also helped to bring about the start of inter-city cup tournament. Unfortunately racism has followed some of Brazils top soccer players. Roberto Carlos of Real Madrid is the most common case of Spanish football fans being constantly racist towards black players, although most of the teams that have racist supporters also have players on their team who are black and come from Brazil. It is a culture that has tarnished the sport that so many are in love with. Things were to improve in Brazil again in 1971 with the introduction of a National League to take place between the City Championships. Since the Brazilian team first won the World Cup in 1958, it has been a hub of talent and ability. It has shone in the eyes of other countries and shown them the beauty at which football can be played. Nowhere in the world will you find the samba rhythm of football that many people believe is the reason why Brazilian football is so good, they think of it as an extension of their lives.
The African Football Association (CAF) has only been in existence since after the Second World War. Before this time the rule of football, along with everything else, was under the French, British and Portuguese. The hold on the majority of countries that these Colonial administrations had was to be one of the reasons football crossed the Mediterranean Sea. The northern countries of Morocco, Egypt, Tunisia and Algeria where the first to start up leagues in Africa with the spread of football becoming progressively southern, with the exception of South Africa which was started around the time of the northern countries. Players from these countries in the north were to be the most dominant and skilful, Egypt had been in the 1920 Olympic Games.After the Second World War and the de-colonisation of Africa the CAF was started to govern the African football nation, it was to have new members on a regular basis when each country gained its independence and in 1957 Egypt won the first African Cup of Nations beating Ethiopia 4 - 0 . This was to continue to this day as one of the premier National Tournaments in the world. Soon after this the CAF had set up an equal to the European Cup and with the winner of each national league playing in the African Champions Cup. The first to be held in 1964 with Oryx Douala of Cameroon winning the first. South Africa was to be the only case of racial discrimination in African football, they were banned from competing in international competition soon after the CAF set up. It was allowed back into the CAF in 1992 with the abolishment of apartheid.
All over the world we see the love for football growing. The scene of players from Iran and USA in the 1998 World Cup posing together for a team photo will be one that many people will look to as what football can do, football can be what brings people, cultures and nations together. It can also be used as a tool for destruction, ignorance, violence and hatred. But if we look closely at what the game has shown us over the past hundred years or so, it is that football is a game of passion, respect, love and dedication. Over and over again in history we see signs of fair play, sportsmanship and camaraderie. Bobby Charlton shaking the hand of Eusabio after he scored against England in the '66 World Cup semi-final. Brazilian players praying to God in thanksgiving after winning the 2002 World Cup. These are the signs from history and today that football is more than just a game, it is an art that is loved everywhere and is a passion that brings us together and unites us under one heading, lovers of football.

Tourism In Africa"MOROCCO"

"The Soul of Morocco:Fez"
After tackling the fouls found in “Soul of Morocco”, I thought I would check to see what other people thought about Sherwood’s article.Taamarbuuta states that she takes issue with calling Fez “the soul” of Morocco and seeking myths. It make sense to me. How did Mr. Sherwood decide that Fez is the soul of Morocco and made the rest to be the body, the uninteresting?I found some confusing stuff somewhere else. In the view from Fes, I noticed that they (or he) had a series of Travel Writing criticism. Some they (or he) liked:” It is refreshing from to come across travel writing that looks a little beneath the orientalist-fantasy stereotype”, and some they (or he) didn’t like: “Why do they bother? That could be the question asked about so many stories written about Morocco. Time and again they pull out the tired old clichés about "mystery" and "romance" and miss the real story”. Simultaneously, they (or he) disapproved of what Taamarbuuta’s expressed in her analysis and describes Sherwood’s article as “splendid”!One thing to say to those who believe that Fez is different: What made Marrakech Marrakech is making Fez the new Marrakech. So, No more of that Everything Morocco uncovers the secret contest: “Fez has been named the Soul of Morocco - it makes you wonder if there is a contest out there we don't know about yet!”Ms. Morocco Time goes on like this: “While I dearly love Fes, this man (Mr. Seffar) has a very typical Fassi mindset. He forgets the thousands of years of Amazigh that’s still in evidence in hundreds of little Berber villages across the Atlas, not to mention all the various unique aspects of other Arab areas in Morocco - Khemisset, Nador, Oujda, Safi… There’s still a lot of “authentic” Morocco to be found outside the main tourist areas - which, by the way, includes Fes and its knobby-kneed crowds of French gawkers."“Fassi mindset”, Ms. Morocco Time, there is no such thing. Fez is a mix of Arabs and Amazigh (and foreigner from all over the world now). We should not forget that Amazigh were here in what’s known as Fez before Arabs, and their mindset is just like the mindset of people from Tinrhir :) That dude interviewed in the article is a meta-orientalist and a producer of orientalist discourse on his own people and city, you find people like him in Meknes, Marrakech ...

VISIT FEZ BY WATCHING THIS VIDEO

"Tangier"

I love Morocco, but I've always called Tangier the Tijuana of Africa. That has changed.
Tangier was a neglected hellhole for a generation. It was an international city -- favored by the West and, therefore, disdained by the last king of Morocco, who made it a point to divert national investment away from Morocco's fourth city.
The new king, Mohammed VI, who took the throne in 1999, believes Tangier should be a great city once again. The first city he visited after his coronation was Tangier. The difference -- as you'll see when you visit -- is breathtaking. The place is still exotic, but restorations are taking place on a grand scale. The beach has been painstakingly cleaned, pedestrian promenades are popping up everywhere, and gardens bloom with lush, new greenery.
The hotels -- and their staffs -- are still quirky. Recently, when I checked into Hotel Continental, flamboyant Jimmy greeted me. On a previous visit, six or seven years ago, I told him I was from Seattle. He said, "206." Now I test him again, saying I'm from Seattle. He says, "206, 360, 425 -- new area codes." Jimmy knows every telephone area code in the United States.
Hotel Continental has you looking for the characters from "The English Patient." Gramophones gather dust on dressers under dingy lights. A serene woman paints a figure eight in the loose tiles with her mop, day after day, surrounded by dilapidation that never goes away. As I updated the information in my guidebook, I found a rare and nonchalant incompetence. My guidebook listed the hotel's phone and e-mail data more accurately than its own printed material did. It's a 70-room hotel with not a sheet of paper in its office.
Roosters and the call to prayer worked together to wake me, along with the rest of the world. When the sun was high enough to send a rainbow plunging into the harbor amid ferries busily coming and going, I stood on my balcony and surveyed Tangier kicking into gear. Women in colorful flowing robes walked to sweatshops adjacent to the port -- happy to earn $8 a day sewing for big-name European clothing lines.
It's an exciting time in Morocco. The king is modernizing. His queen was a commoner; Moroccans say she's the first to be seen in public. They have never seen the king's mother. They actually don't even know what she looks like. Walking the streets, you see a modest new affluence, lots of vision and energy, all without diluting the Arab culture.
Moroccans don't seem to emulate or even care about the United States. Al-Jazeera blares on teahouse TVs -- with stirring images of American atrocities inflicted on fellow Muslims. But people seem numb to the propaganda. I felt not a hint of animosity toward me as an American -- something I had been concerned about. There was no political edge to any graffiti or posters. It's a rare place where signs are in three languages, English not making the cut (it's Arabic, French and Spanish).
The market scene is a wonderland of everything but pork. There are mountains of brilliant olives, a full palette of spices, children with knives happy to perform for my camera. Each animal is slaughtered in accordance with halal: drained of its blood with a sharp knife, with its head pointed toward Mecca in the name of Allah.
Until now I've recommended that day-trippers from Spain take the organized tour (with all the groups from Spain's Costa del Sol). A guide meets you at the ferry after the hourlong ride from Spain, and they take you on a bus tour of the city, walk through the old town and stage a few Kodak moments: camel ride, snake charmer and Atlas mountain tribal musicians. Then you go to a restaurant that has a live band and a belly dancer (which has nothing to do with Moroccan culture -- but tourists don't seem to care). Finally, you visit a big shop. They must make a healthy commission, because the round-trip ferry ride with the tour (about $70) costs essentially the same as the round-trip ferry ride without the tour.
During my stay I met gracious Moroccans eager to talk and share. About the only time I saw other Western tourists was when I crossed paths with one of the day-tripping tour groups. Those on the tours walked in tight single file, clutching their purses and day bags nervously to their bellies like paranoid kangaroos, as they bundled past one last line of street merchants to get safely back onto the ferry to Europe.
I was so comfortable, and they were so nervous and embattled, that the scene reminded me of some kind of self-inflicted hostage crisis. Do yourself a favor -- visit Tangier on your own.

"Am I safe in morocco?"

Go to any travel forum and you’ll find questions just like this. The age and nationality (but never the hair color) vary, but the questions follow the same pattern of sheer, utter terror when it comes to visiting Morocco. Although my true desire is to scream, “NO, YOU’RE NOT! DON’T COME!” my honesty and desire for money to filter into Morocco gets the best of me and I only reply in a slightly snarky manner.
The most absurd thing, however, is how defensive I get of Moroccans when this question is asked. I mean, the truth is that I always feel SAFE in Morocco, but I certainly don’t always feel at ease, relaxed, comfortable, unbothered, or any number of other delightful adjectives. So why my defense? There’s a number of reasons.

1 And people say Moroccans treat tourists badly.

Which is not entirely untrue, of course. Moroccans frequently up their prices threefold for tourists (which is in my opinion justifiable, but that’s not the point); tourists, on the other hand, often deserve it. Not because they’re so wealthy or anything trite like that - because the tourists treat the Moroccans like crap! This is most prevalent in Marrakech; I remember a time last November…I was in Marrakech for a couple of days for a conference and had a bit of time to shop, so I was running around like a chicken with her head cut off trying to find the exact items I needed. At my last stop, intent on buying two Moroccan shirts, I waited behind a British tourist purchasing a djellaba. The shopkeeper (as many in Marrakech do) spoke perfect English and told her the djellaba would cost 300 dirhams. She, of course, found this price absurd and took the advice of the guidebooks and bargained. “200,” she said. Now, any veteran knows that it’s important for anyone, tourist or otherwise, to cut the initial cost in half to start one’s bargaining, but regardless, she did her duty. The man replied, “290,” not being a man of large increments. After a bit of back and forth, they eventually agreed on 250 dirhams which is a decent price for a Brit if you ask me. The woman stepped out of the shop for a moment to speak with her friend (small shop, nowhere to stand) then returned and said “I only have 200 dirhams.” Djellaba already in hand, she gave the man the cash and walked out before he had a chance to say anything.
My eyes must have been popping out of my head, because the man laughed and said it happens all the time. And then, after engaging him in a brief, simple and polite Arabic conversation, he priced each shirt I’d chosen at 50 dirhams each (which is extremely reasonable for a tourist). I said “45 each,” he said “done” and I went on my merry way, knowing that I’d just paid somewhere around what my husband would pay in another city. Which brings me to my second point…

2 - Bitch, please. The whole world doesn’t have to speak English.

This coming from me, a girl who just recently picked up a second language, and not even fluently. Even better - I don’t speak anything fluently aside from English, but I manage to garner respect no matter where I travel. It’s really not too difficult - learn “please,” “thank you,” “excuse me,” “how much,” and the numbers in any language, and you’re good to go. Now, I can’t say I always play by this rule - when visiting Germany and the Czech Republic this year, I didn’t get beyond please or thank you because everyone seemed so eager to speak English. There, it was a reasonable request, given that English is the second language of both countries. But in Morocco, where the second language is French, it makes a huge difference if you can speak a few words of that or Arabic.
I’m not a boastful person, however, when I meet other foreigners who’ve just been shopping, I’m always tempted to ask (and sometimes do) how much they paid for items which I’ve purchased in the past. More often than not, I find that I paid somewhere between 70 and 90 percent of what they paid. A “Touareg” scarf, which is priced anywhere between 20 and 50 dirhams in the big cities, should only cost about 15-20 and shouldn’t bleed too badly when washed. Bilgha (babouches), Moroccan slippers, can cost a tourist up to 120dh (depending on quality of course) but should only cost 40-50dh.
Why the discrepancy if we’re all white and look to be about the same income level (and age)? The fact is, if you don’t make the effort to appreciate Morocco and Moroccans (which requires a little bit of language skill), sellers have no reason to respect your wallet. A little “Salam aleikum” will go a long way.

3 - Outside of Agadir, you oughtta leave your shorts at home, girl.

I wish I could show you photographs of some of my Moroccan students. I have a few who saunter into class wearing knee-high stiletto boots, miniskirts, midriff showing, big gaudy earrings, way too much makeup - sometimes I’m almost certain they’re headed to work afterward, if you know what I mean. Sixteen-year-olds! In fact, they’re just exercising one of the few freedoms that teenage girls have - dressing as they like.
You do not have that same freedom. Well, you do of course, but I can guarantee you’re going to get ten times the hassle they do. Why? For one, you’re not Moroccan, two you’re probably not Muslim, and three, you may very well look like the girls they see in those favorites of Western film, girls who tend to have few scruples.
So how can you avoid being mistaken for that kind of girl? Not dressing like that kind of girl, of course. It can be frustrating in some ways, wanting to be yourself and not hold anything back - but I’ve found that being myself even in terms of fashion is possible, if I follow a few ground rules:
-Don’t wear anything that falls more than an inch above the knee (men, just don’t wear shorts please - they look stupid anyway).
-Your breasts are far sexier than your upper arms - worry less about long sleeves and more about cleavage.
-Don’t cover your hair - most Moroccan girls don’t and if you’re not otherwise dressed Islamically, you’ll just look stupid. Besides, hijabis get hit on by Moroccan men too, you know.
-You can be as colorful as you want in your own style, but wearing Moroccan clothes will mostly just make you stand out.
I wear short sleeves, I wear my hair down, I wear jeans nearly every day. I only don a djellaba on the occasional Friday for couscous, and I never wear jewelry other than earrings, my wedding ring, and a small necklace. Am I still myself? Certainly. Am I drawing a whole lot of attention? Well, not for that reason anyway.

"What can you say about morocco?"

Morocco is a linguistically rich country and you can't live here long without noticing it. Or even picking up one or two languages yourself. Although Arabic is the official language, there are two types of Arabic - the classical version based on religion, history and culture and the unique Moroccan dialect known as darija. Most Moroccans know one or the other or both. Most Moroccans are also fluent in a second, sometimes even a third, language. After decades of French administration during the Protectorate era, French is commonly used even today for business and education. Many Moroccans with historically strong ties to France and French culture use the French language more often than Arabic. Spanish is commonly heard throughout the north of Morocco and English is rapidly gaining pace as the next language. All of this without even addressing the Berber dialects being used in the remote regions and villages throughout the country.What is interesting about language, and especially in the context of a country like Morocco, is that language is also an expression of identity and culture. All of us, no matter where we are from, use language to convey our origin, intellect and self-concept. Language expresses who we are in any given situation. Listeners make judgements about us based on how we say what we say. Bilingual people consciously choose the language they speak with another person based on their relationship with that person. For example, we may speak our mother tongue at home in a pure down home dialect that we would never use on the street or with co-workers. In another situation, we would choose the language most pleasing to an elderly relative, or the adopted language to function as a competent, educated professional. It all depends on who we want the listener to think we are at that moment.People who speak several languages often engage in what linguists call code-switching - they mix words from various languages to more precisely express themselves. They do this deliberately yet without consciously thinking about it beforehand. Their brains simply choose from the storehouse of language the words best suited to the occasion. One of my personal favorites is the French word bouleverser meaning to upset something or turn it around/upside down. Nothing in English says it quite like in French. Linguists used to assume code-switching was the result of imperfect understanding of a language, but now they believe it is a sign of superior use and understanding. To our brains, languages are all the same and for communication. That's why small children don't struggle with them. They don't try to analyze or categorize what they learn quite so strictly as older learners. All the words for strawberries are simply all the words for strawberries.

"Other famous place:The Sahara"

The Sahara / MoroccoThe Sahara is the world's largest desert. Only a small part of the Sahara is fertile, where corn, dates and other fruits grow, these parts are fed by underground rivers and oases. The Sahara can be an inspirational experience at night, with the air being crisp, clean and clear, the stars being so close you can almost touch them and a silence that is deafening.The Sahara desert stretches accross much of North Africa covering over 9 000 000 square kilometers (roughly the size of the United States). In fact, the Sahara covers some 30% of the entire African continent. It is the hottest place in the world with summer temperatures that often exceeds 57 degrees Celsius. It has an annual rainfall of 0 - 25 millimeters, and is very windy, with windstorms sweeping up the sand up to 1000 meters high and moving the sand dunes constantly.The Sahara consists of one quarter volcanic mountains, one quarter sand, rocks and gravel-covered plains and small areas of vast permanent vegetation. The vegetation includes shrubs, grasses, and trees in the highland and in the oases along the river beds. Some of the plants are well adjusted to the climate and sprout within three days of rain and sow their seeds within two weeks after that. Only a small part of the Sahara is fertile, where corn, dates and other fruits grow, these parts are fed by underground rivers and oases.Animals in the Sahara are mainly gerbils, cape hare, deer, weasels, baboons, jackals, sand foxes, mongooses, desert hedgehogs and over 300 bird species.The Sahara can be an inspirational experience at night, with the air being crisp, clean and clear, the stars being so close you can almost touch them and a silence that is deafening.