Black perspectives on international relations

Dr Jenna Marshall

Hello, good evening, everyone, and it is my pleasure to welcome you to tonight’s discussion on Black Perspectives on International Relations. I will be your – I will be the Chair for tonight’s conversation. My name is Dr Jenna Marshall. I’m a Lecturer in the Department of European and International Studies at King’s College London. And here we have our esteemed panel of speakers, both in – on the stage, as well as virtually.

Just a few housekeeping notes to mention. Let me just have my notes for you. For those of you who would like to pose questions during the Q&A session, please remain seated, someone will approach you and you can pose your question then. Please be very succinct as p0ssible and – so that we can have as many questions as possible. After tonight’s event there will be a reception from six until 8:00pm, and this is to celebrate a curated project, “Black Britain Beyond.” It will showcase a les – a selection of Black cultural archive portraits, illuminating the talent and pipeline of next generation leaders in the Black British community. So, please do stay on for that after tonight’s discussions.

So, onto tonight’s speakers. We have, virtually, Kathryn Nwagia – sorry, let me try this one more time, Kathryn Nwajaiku-Dahou, a Director of Programmes for the Overseas Development Institute, and here with me, to my immediate left, we have Dr Awino Okech, Associate Professor of Political Sociology at SOAS University of London, and Bell Ribeiro-Addy, Member of Parliament for Streatham. So, just one last point, we will have five minutes of interventions from each speaker, followed by a panel discussion and then, we will open up to both in-person questions and if there are any questions from those of you attending online. So, Kathryn, if you would like to begin with your five-minute intervention.

Kathryn Nwajaiku-Dahou

Thank you very much and good evening, good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and many thanks for this kind invitation to speak to you today during Black History Month, on the issue of Black voices in international relations. I’m sorry I’m not able to be there in person. I would’ve very much loved to be there, but couldn’t make it this time.

So, I want to begin, first, with a short biography, because I think it’s important when we speak about things Black, or when we, as Black people, talk about our experience, that we acknowledge that Black is as much a condition as a racial category and that by virtue of our lived experiences, we carry the weight of that condition differently. So, I say this at a time when, in light of the arrival of first non-White Prime Minister of this country in office, tongues are wagging, waxing and waning lyrical about the wider significance of the event. Much has been said about from whence Rishi Sunak hails. I will say no more. Let me turn to my own background.

So, I was born in Glasgow. You wouldn’t tell so from my accent, but I haven’t always spoken like this. I was born in Glasgow to Igbo Nigerian parents, who had left their country, separately sponsored, by uncle, in the case of my dad, an Irish Catholic Nun, in the case of my mum, to study in Glasgow and Newcastle, respectively. They’d never intended to settle in the UK, but eventually married in Scotland and ended up having four children there, and I was the fourth. Heavily invested in learning, education and personal advancement, most of us, most of my siblings, went onto higher education, as did I.

From the age of five, after a stort – short stint in Nigeria, where – which went a bit pear-shaped, as my mum couldn’t find appropriate work after the Biafran War, we were on the wrong side, so after that, from the age of five, I grew up mainly in London. Went to school there, formed my long-lasting friendships there and became politically minded there. And it was there that questions of race, being Black, what it meant to be Black, or did not, informed my adolescence and my young adulthood. I went on to study history and French at the University of Ang – East Anglia, was fortunate of – to go and spend a year abroad, in a French speaking Caribbean country, where I taught English, and then went on to study area studies Africa, with a focus on politics in West Africa, at SOAS.

So, I went, after that, to have a peppered career in international development, which, for me, was a ticket to get to know Africa better and to immerse myself in worlds which were Black – in which Black was majority. ‘Cause I remember, you know, I was always quite uncomfortable with this Black Britishness in which I was a minority. I remember carrying that quite heavily, that ethnic minority status and so, I was always – it was enriching, empowering for me to at least appear to be one of many.

So, fast forward now to, do you know, what’s that got to do with what we’re talking about, Black perspectives on questions international? Well, today, after escapades inside and outside academia, working for NGOs, governments, multilateral institutions, I find myself in the illustrious position of being Director of a leading UK think tank and managing and heading the Politics and Governance Team, no less. At a time when 60 – you know, the 60-year-old plus institution is in the throes of its own transition, trying to shed its postcolonial skin and striving to be a global affairs think tank of relevance to rich and poor countries alike. Where questions that concern us all, equity, inequality, injustice, climate crisis, the challenges of living in digitalised societies are, you know, are pressing issues that all of us want to turn our attention to. It’s also at this time that the organisation I’m working for is seeking to take questions of race and racial justice seriously. What it calls – refers to as ‘decolonisation’.

So, I’ve been tasked with leading the charge. I’m chairing a taskforce, which is responsible for decolonising our research and policy work. And I did this very reluctantly, you know, but succumbed to the challenge, because for all the years – you know, I’ve been working in international development since 1994. Of all the years I’ve been working in this space, I have been complaining about the absence of serious consideration, or a serious grappling, with questions of race in the aid sector. So, you know, I had to jump at the chance, I suppose, to make some important changes.

The George Floyd moment, Black Lives Matter and its internationalisation, clearly has moved us a few steps forward. So, conversations about race are beginning to, or not just beginning, are being heard increasingly louder and, in some cases, clearer. So, the pent-up frustrations about that White gaze are being aired openly. So, this is definitely something, I believe, that would suggest we’re moving forward, and new policies and new strategies on diversity and inclusion are all over the place, okay?

But is the glass half full or half empty? My answer to that question that I’m asking myself almost every day is that actually, I don’t believe we’ve even begun to get our fingers around that would-be glass. So, we are doing incredible things, reviewing how we’re staffing our organisations, creating awareness about unconscious bias and so on and so forth, in producing policies, which would take – you know, which would – which forefront the importance of questions of racial justice and need to rethink the way we produce knowledge, all good.

However, there are some fundamental questions that obviously remain unanswered, and these are to do with power, the way international relationships between nations are structured, and the deeper symmetries that have deep, long and ever-widening roots, actually. And I really – I will finish my five minute – over five minute introduction by just saying now, I think it was very telling, you know, in February 2023, we’ll be at one – on anniversary of the Russia-Ukraine conflict and the drama, the enacting of the racial politics of international relations was played out in that refugee moment that we all recall, when would be third country nationals were not ena – able to be part of the trains that were moving out, were being pushed back. And, you know, I think it’s an important screensaver that we should all be pondering as we think about racial – or the questions of race and Black perspectives in international relations. So, thank you.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Thank you so much, Kathryn. So, onto Awino.

Dr Awino Okech

Thank you, and I don’t think my university will be happy if I don’t jump onto that moment and say look at what SOAS University of London produces. These are our graduates. So, I’m Awino Okech and I’m Kenyan, African and I teach at SOAS University in London.

I’m going to offer three provocations as a way of opening up the conversation this afternoon, and the first is, obviously, to state the obvious, that, you know, many of us who come from the majority world, who live and work here, are sitting and observing, with a little bit of bemusement, the ongoing politics in the United Kingdom. That bemusement is not because we are ungrateful at being here and the opportunities that are provided by virtue of bringing in our expertise as expatriates to the country and in service of the international community, as well as the local community here. But it’s because it reminds us of the broader conversations that many of us have been having on the African Continent and elsewhere about the real meaning of democracy.

I think one of the questions that has often been raised is that those of us in the majority world have not quite figured out what this democracy question is, and we need to be trained accordingly and we need to – our systems need to be made a little bit tighter and better in connection to voting, in connection to our constitution, our laws. To move away from ethnonationalist politics as a way to frame the division and the contestation of resources in our countries.

But can we see that the same conversations that have been, sort of, imposed on the majority world in relation to figuring out democracy are playing out in this very context today? So, when we ask the question, “What can Black perspectives of international relations offer?” I think what they can offer is continuous conversations that we’ve heard in multilateral spaces, whether it’s in the United Nations, whether it’s in connection to our bilateral relations with countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States, around equality and inequalities, arou – and which, at the heart of that, sits the question of power.

The UK political situation at this particular moment is forcing us to pay deep attention to the question of structural inequality. My colleague has just talked about the excitement, or non-excitement, depending on what side of the fence you might be sitting on, in relation to the current Prime Minister, who I discovered this morning is actually my age mate, you know, who is the Prime Minister of this country. Now, for some people they see this as evidence of post-racialism. For some people, we will say, “Let’s hold on a minute. We saw what happened across the pond with Barrack Obama, right, where the first Black President of the United States.” That was a very important political moment for the country and for the globe. I’m Kenyan, so we, sort of, always claim cousinhood to Barrack at every single moment. But yet, the fact that immediately after Barrack’s two terms what we see is Trump emerging and Trumpism emerging as a result of that, tells us the nature of resistance that is baked into our societies when what are described as racial minorities take the seat of power or begin to challenge us to think about how our societies are structured.

So, when we say, for instance, as – when democracy experts come to Kenya and try and observe our elections and offer deep analysis about how Kenyans are moving away from ethnic-based politics, can we not argue that there’s a strong debate on ethnonationalism happening in this country at the moment? There’s a strong debate that is happening here about who owns Britain, who has the right to occupy particular seats of power, who is the true British person? There actually should be no reason why your Sunaks and others should be making a case for how much Britain has given them and how much they want to give bath – give back, rather, if there wasn’t a contestation about what Britishness looks like and means and how that is racialised.

And therefore, the justification, through gratitude, through espousing British values, through distancing yourself from what is now claimed to be wokeness, which is really just people who are asking critical questions about the nature of inequalities of our societies, that would not be happening if at the heart of this conversation was one in which we are being forced to look deeply at how our societies are deeply racialised and gendered. To consistently put on the sidelines communities that are considered to not belong, communities that are considered only useful when they’re producing labour, when they’re servicing our factories, when they’re servicing our universities, like I am at the moment, your wonderful SOAS University of London that I’m teaching, you know, your young people, or when they’re servicing our corporate sector. So, there’s an idea around the valuable immigrant, vis-à-vis the ones that we do not want and therefore, will block them at the borders. We are proud, when we set up migration policies that seek to guard the borders and determine which is the right immigrant and which is the wrong immigrant.

So, which brings me to the second point, which is around the crisis of multilateralism. So, if we are saying the UK moment presents us with an opportunity to think about democracy and its true meaning and what we can learning from the African Continent, who have been raising these questions about the lie of democracy and elections as the, sort of, the only prism to think about the distribution of resources. Then, the current moment, both in relation to the UK, the United States, as we watch the, sort of, concerted effort by, you know, Trump and the afterlives of the Trump regime and how that has extended even to the ways in which, you know, the US and other, you know, larger countries are engaging with the question of Ukraine and Russia, these two particular moments force us to question what the current moment is telling us about multilateralism.

And the moment of multilateralism that is forcing us – that we are being forced to look at keenly, again, is one that I would argue that many of us in the majority world have been raising in relation to how we are positioned, whether it’s in the United Nations or whether it’s in relation to the global economy. That consistently place particular countries on the receiving end of global aid, on the receiving end of economic policies and economic governance infrastructure, that consistently places them on the backfoot.

And I think the COVID-19 crisis, for instance, allowed us to see that this is not a question of a begging bowl. It allows us to see how these inequalities are really hardwired into the infrastructure of our multilateral system to consistently place particular parts of the world on the backfoot. When African countries said, “We have money, what we need is the patent so that we can create our vaccines,” “What? Oh, no, no, no, no, no, that’s not happening.” Right? So, it was easier for the – for those behind the production of vaccines, for those who were much more invested in protecting the health of their countries, as though COVID-19 was not going to cross borders, to ensure that they held onto the economic benefit that would emerge from controlling vaccines. To the detriment of the public health factor that would continuously create a situation where the health inequalities and the socioeconomic inequalities that are seen right now are – continue to manifest as a result of COVID-19. So, I will leave it there.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Thank you. Really important points being raised, questions of thinking through democracy, thinking about citizenship in its broader context. So, we had a personal anecdote, we went more to the global and now, if MP Ribeiro-Addy can speak to the UK context.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP

Well, I think one of the reasons why – sorry, hmmm, I’ll get that out of me now. I think one of the reasons why we’re not taking Black voices as seriously as we should do in international relations is because at most levels, a lot of things are being done tokenistically, and because people are conflating diversity with representation. Diversity is great, I think it’s important that we see different people, that are different in many different ways, reflected in different areas, but representation means something entirely different.

For example, I won’t talk about the current Prime Minister, could get myself into some trouble, but I’ll talk about three female Prime Ministers that we’ve had. Under the three female Prime Minsters that we’ve had, and I think, actually, particularly the last one, she made a real mess of it, under those three female Prime Ministers, we didn’t see a massive change for women. We didn’t see women all of a sudden rise into the ranks of high earners. Change didn’t come that quickly and we saw them being discriminated against, still, at high levels and facing poverty, not just in the UK, but across the world.

So, when we talk about diversity, people looking – people being different, looking different and being in different spaces is great, ‘cause it’s important to see society reflected. But for representation to be truly reflected, when people get into those positions, they have to take the interests of those individuals with them and unfortunately, that’s not happening. And it strikes me that governments and institutions generally are not making effort to change things and change the different reflections when it comes to international relations, in particular, because it actually benefits them the way it is now.

Capitalism has generally been held together by discrimination and it has been for centuries and race itself being a social construct, biologically, there’s no such thing. I remember first hearing that “There’s no race but the human race,” and I thought that’s really nice, that’s really cuddly, but biologically, there is actually no race but the human race, but we were – we – that social construct was put into society to justify the enslavement of African peoples and thereby, people of colour and belittling them all over the world for different forms of subjugation and allowing for those countries to be colonised. And that has been the basis of capitalism right across the world.

So, changing that, kind of, landscape, changing that situation where we have more equality, doesn’t actually help maintain the systems that have been set up in the way that they have. I mean, it’s great we have a United Nations, but we have a Security Council, so what’s the purpose of the other countries there? And every single gain that we’ve seen, in terms of racial justice and representation at a high level, with ending slavery, ending colonialism, civil rights struggles of Black and Brown people in Western countries, all of those have been – had to been fought for with blood.

And when we look back at how that racism continues to playout, people at times in this country, don’t think about how much the issues we face here are linked to how people are seen abroad. Now, if you look at somebody in Africa that looks like me, and think they are lesser than you, of course you’re going to treat me with discrimination here and that plays out in how we fund things, how we do things. So, aid at the moment has become and industry, I very much believe that. There are many NGOs continue to be well-meaning, but they’re all competing against each other.

You’ve seen the private sector now come into the NGO sector and what do we know about anything that has to do with – that is a business, that has shareholders? There is supply and there is demand, and effectively, to be able to ensure that these businesses stay afloat, they need to keep supplying people that need this aid and that doesn’t seem to me to be bringing about an end to some of the difficulties that people face right across the world, but particularly in the Global South. And every time there are attempts by countries to come together and push forward in certain ways, they’re really disregarded, again, because they don’t fit this particular narrative.

So, I think about a few years back, the UK Trade Afric – the UK-Africa Trade Summit that was dubbed “The scramble for Africa,” we had the Prime Minister then, two Prime Ministers ago now, Boris Johnson, go and he’s – his speech made it sound like he wasn’t listening to African leaders at all. He made no reference to Africa’s past and the horrible role that the UK had in it and actually, he made no reference to Africa’s future or the African Common Market.

Now, when established, the African Common Market is going to be the largest free trade area in the world, with a workforce that – well over a billion that will rival India and China. Now, imagine what that could be like and imagine how arrogant you’d have to be to completely just disregard it and ignore it. And then, this is when we see countries right across Africa being amongst the fastest growing economies in the world.

And, you know, you’ve really heard about how we keep operating in the system of debt. I listened to a very, very interesting video a couple of days ago where they talked about why, you know, why the UK, the US, other Western nations, have huge amounts of debt, but they’re not in the same position that some other countries in the Global South are. And the clear explana – clearer explanation, clearest explanation I’ve ever heard of this is because their debt is their own, their debt is in dollars. If they want to pay it off, they can just print more dollars. African debt is in dollars, they have to pay it back, because it’s not their own currency, and that system is deliberately set up.

But what we have to realise is, thinking about – you – kind of, touching on the pandemic and how things have changed, actually countries in Africa, in the Caribbean, did so much better in the pandemic than we did, here. We lost many more lives by percentage, so did the US, and that was even with the serious vaccine nationalism that we saw. You know, you touched on the issue of that actually leading a better global public health model to ensure that these – that coronavirus didn’t cross borders and even in spite of that, even in spite of the fact that it could be some harmful to us, we weren’t going to give it out because it affected people’s bottom line. And that just shows how awful this system has become.

And what we have to remember is that every time different countries achieve and that they’re able to survive without the assistance, and quite often, that is what’s happening, we have to remember that whilst here, we’re pandering to nationalists, countries right across Africa and right across the Global South, have their own nationalists. They have their own nationalists and every one of them are going to tell you about their achievements one day, in spite of their former colonisers, and they’re going to say, “It’s not because of aid or because of the privilege of formerly being colonised.” And when that happens in a global context, it’s going to cause problems for a country like ours, for example, that has left its largest trading partner. We’ve left the EU. Brexit was apparently done. We’re still doing it by my estimations. But we’ve left our largest trading partner and you would think that if we were sensible, we would look towards those other forced – other countries that we forced English upon and we’d look to them. But instead, we continue to treat them with disrespect.

Now, I’m one person who firmly believes that if you are going to go out into the world and make friends, you need to treat them as your equals, to treat people in these countries as your equals. And in order to do that, you’re going to have to respond to some of the atrocities of the past and a way to do that, obviously, is reparations. You need to look at reparations, you need to look at what’s – you need to return things that don’t belong to you, to do all of these different things to show that level of equality. But as I started with, that level of equality, there’s no willingness for that levels of equality to be shown, because it doesn’t benefit those who have the most power. So, that’s why we find ourselves in the way we do. I don’t want to go on for too long. I think I’ll leave it there for now, yeah.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Okay, brilliant, thank you. Really important points there, questions of restitution and reparations for how we then include Black voices and how that could potentially impact decision-making at the international level. You provided a few statistics earlier about the continent and I have a question here that I’ll pose to all three of you and you can respond as you’d like. Will an African Century bring Black perspectives on international relations to the fore of the geopolitical agenda? So, how do we conceive over, think about the idea of an African Century and will that be enough to galvanise further change, in terms of decision-making with the inclusion of Black voices? Kathryn, would you like to begin with that?

Kathryn Nwajaiku-Dahou

Yes, I can take a stab at that. I mean, thank you for the question and I really enjoyed listening to the other panellists. I spend a lot of my working life, part – especially since COVID has enabled us to start to travel again, engaging internationally, going to conferences and so on. And I’m always astounded at the challenging absence of powerful African voices in those gatherings, and worried, actually, about that as a phenomena. I’ve been doing a lot of work on tech, attending some quite major tech gatherings, Davos, another one recently in San Francisco. And if African voices are not there and at the table, the marginalisation, the structural marginalisation, about which both panellists spoke, runs the risk of becoming even more severe.

And I do think, you know, if you look at Africa as a continent, notwithstanding in the African Common Market to be, but African as a continent of nations, India is not, it is a country. But when you do see the way in which Indian business, political weight, is evident on that international stage, and Africa’s absent, you know, there – it’s clear that there are some very important challenges. And I say that because when I think of the African Century, it’s clear that until economically, Africa as a continent, is making – taking – take – is enable – is able to really capitalise on that economy of scale and carry its weight economically internationally, that questions of race and race equality will never really be resolved. And, you know, that those – that – the interconnectedness between respect, domestically, in this country, and weightiness, are – is clear.

And whilst not wanting to be, you know, negative, when I look at the African Continent and the developments politically and economically, the weight of China, Russia, Turkey and the challenge of indebtedness, whilst there are lots of positive trends, just like I think in the 90s, the Africa renaissance was much heralded and then, seemed to be increasingly hollow. I would caution against a, kind of, an overenthusiastic imagining of an African Century, unless it is, kind of, guided by a close look at the ways in which power and economics are being restructured on the continent. Whilst I wouldn’t want to say, you know, it’s a rehashing of the Cold War, you know, I think there are resonances that are really important to pay close attention to.

So, I’m not sure if even though demographically, it is clear that there are advantages that Africa has that could potentially be taken advantage of, but I’m unconvinced, as of yet, that we’re in the pos – in a place where that African Century will become a reality.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Okay, brilliant, thank you. Would you like to also respond to that question?

Dr Awino Okech

Yeah, sure. So, two quick points. I was struck by the commonality of political positioning of African and Caribbean Heads of State at the United Nations General Assembly around the positioning of African countries and Caribbean countries within the United Nations, the questions of the Security Council, questions around reparations. There’s a, sort of, very consistent messaging and I’m certain that the Kenyan President, Ruto, did not go and hang out with all these other Presidents before the statements were made. For me, that is something to hold onto, because this is no longer a conversation about discreet African countries making a political statement about their own country for the benefit of their own country, but we are seeing a coalition of voices within the Black majority world and that is an important thing.

So, rather than the African Century, what are the sorts of connections we need to be making within the Black majority world, as folks like Mia Mottley have called for? Because that, for me, is where the power lies and it’s really a looking back to the start of the pan-African narrative and Black internationalism as the place we need to return to.

The second point is that I’m a firm believer in people and movements. I think there are things that we can rely on our governments and Heads of State to do, but power is power. The ways in which our politics are structured at this current moment are designed to do very specific things. People pursue power for political and personal interest. Our political structures still continue to exclude the vast majority of people, but there is a strong concerted engagement by social justice movements, by policy think tanks, by academics, on the African Continent and in the diaspora and it is to that analysis that we must look to. It is to that engagement that we must look to, to understand how is it that we reposition and re-engage the global stage at this moment, when it is evident that things are crumbling, right?

Which brings me to my third point, and to use a colloquial term, “There is need for a family meeting,” alright, which is to say look at what is happening in the globe at this particular moment. If this is not the time within which we harness our collective voices, then this window might not open again. But that’s a family meeting, so I’ll not expand what the family meeting needs to discuss in this place.

Dr Jenna Marshall

So, respond or I can open to further questions.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP

And just briefly…

Dr Jenna Marshall

Yeah, go on.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP

…following on from that. I think – and I’ve heard of it referred to a lot this time, that the additional region of Africa, the diaspora, people speaking about issues of race and racism right across the world, I think about the Black Lives Matter movement and how that particular resurgence has opened up conversations, much of the conversations we’ve been having today, in terms of people of African’s desce – African descent’s place across the world. And I think there will be a force listening. Just as with all of the other struggles that Black people, working class people, have had to fight a lot of the time, it’s not will they be listened to? It is, quite frankly, they will be – people will be forced to listen, because there is a, certainly, a commonality of purpose and there are some things that people just aren’t going to stand for. I mean…

Dr Jenna Marshall

Okay, brilliant, well said. So, now I would like to open the floor to questions. I will take three questions at a time. I’m also mindful that there are those participants participating online, so I will try my best to take one or two questions online, as well. The gentleman over here, the gentleman at the back, there and the – is there any women raising their hands? The – yeah, and the lady over there, thank you. So, let – I’ll take you – these three and then, we will respond and try to have another round of questions.

Dr Isaiah Pushito Al-Mustafa

Thank you very much. I am…

Dr Jenna Marshall

Sorry…

Dr Isaiah Pushito Al-Mustafa

…Dr Isaiah Push…

Dr Jenna Marshall

…could you introduce yourself, as well? Sorry about that.

Dr Isaiah Pushito Al-Mustafa

I’m – yes, I’m…

Dr Jenna Marshall

Yeah.

Dr Isaiah Pushito Al-Mustafa

Thank you.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Sorry.

Dr Isaiah Pushito Al-Mustafa

I am Dr Isaiah Pushito Al-Mustafa of University of Plymouth. I’m a Management Consultant in Port Efficiency. My question is very simple, Africans, wherever they come from, is immaterial. What is important is Africans who see themself as a broader and assist. This very concept is what leads Africa not to go forward, to move on Africa. Instead for them to build a family relationship, they build an animonious [means acrimonious] or possibly, kind of, competing with themself. And Black is Black, that’s the truth, and that comes to the issue of economy. Dr, please, I’ve forgotten your name, please, my Nigerian sister, before in Glasgow, how can we improve African economy? We have resources, but we export the resources to developed countries. Fine, trading is very important, but we are short-changed of our trading expertise, trading profit, margins, whatever.

A very clear example is where you come from, Nigeria. Nigeria is an West African – is West Africa, export crude oil, export gas, but been a lot of news in the last few weeks from Nigeria is corporal tax and corporal tax is not just one single person doing it. There are international aid companies operating in Nigeria, Chevron, Shell, what have you, Nigerian National Oil Company and MPC, Nigerian Security Officers and even people from the oil-rich region of Niger Delta. So, do we think we are serious, as Africans? We have to manage the family first, before we can be able to have a louder voice internationally. Thank you.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Okay, it’s okay, I’ll Chair.

Dr Isaiah Pushito Al-Mustafa

It was quite a long point.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Yeah, it’s okay. Yeah, go ahead, sir.

John Wigley

I’m John Wigley, member of Chatham House. I’d like to ask the speakers how would they define the essence or uniqueness of the Black perspective? Because I’ve heard nothing from the speakers that I, as a White Anglo-Saxon Puissant man, would’ve been perfectly – would not have been perfectly happy to say.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Okay, thank you very much, and…

Soraya

Yeah, so my name is Soraya, I am a student, and so, my question is, we know that there is a tendency of seeing Black people as a monolith, so, when bringing Black voices into conversations, how do we make sure that within that representation, we also represent the multiplicity of voices and of experiences? ‘Cause I’m sure you know the experience of Blackness for an African American, for diasporas in Europe or for African people within the continent will be different.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Yeah, brilliant, thank you very much. I would allow Kathryn to respond first, if you can…

Kathryn Nwajaiku-Dahou

Thank you very much.

Dr Jenna Marshall

…go ahead with the first…

Kathryn Nwajaiku-Dahou

Thank you very much for those questions. On the question of economy, I’m not an Economist. I, kind of, study the political economy of things and it’s clear, you know, as my – a predecessor, you know, former – other speakers have said, you know, that there is an interconnectedness between the global challenge, the crisis of capitalism we see and some of the deep structural inequalities that keep our continent where it is. I would just say, on the Niger Delta, a region very dear to me, that – and this is connected to, also, what was said earlier, there are people’s movements that, for the last 30 years, have been challenging that state of affairs and who also are arguing for a future post-oil, alternative – and alternative ambitions for Nigeria, you know, where – in terms of, you know, climate justice and so on and so forth.

So, there are ways in which I think we can bring these strands together and I would very much agree that, you know, at the realm of ideas, we have serious work to do and there are important trends. Mia Mottley’s engagement with the African Continent being one. The conversation around reparations being alive and kicking, revived, being another, for around – you know, around which there is cause for hope, as well as clear sightedness.

On the question of the uniqueness of the Black experience, the exper – I – when I gave my introduction, the reason why I spent so long going on about, you know, my own trajectory, was in order to be able to demonstrate that this is where I speak from as a Black person. The experience of the – Black as a condition and the experiences of a racism, as well as many other things, are multiple. I would not claim or wish to speak on behalf of anyone, apart from myself. However, I do think if one is listening very carefully, there are commonalities that all speakers have see – sought to raise and I think it’s also important to listen very carefully in order to pick up those resonances. I think I’ll hand over to the others, thank you.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Thank you. Would you like to…

Dr Awino Okech

Would you like a go?

Dr Jenna Marshall

…across a point?

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP

Oh, yeah, I – in terms of the first question and looking at issues of economy and actually, division, a lot of, you know, these things – the countries in the Global Set was set up on the basis of divide and rule. And again, I’ll point specifically back to Africa, in terms of how countries were carved up, some tribes were put in different places, etc. And in – there was deliberate underdevelopment, just to ensure a constant flow of resources from the Global South to the Global North, and you see it continued now. Even where countries have gained independence, a lot of time they didn’t give back, but they still don’t have the ownership over their natural resources.

And then, we see that neoliberalism continued again and I will keep talking about aid. Some people get upset when I do it, but I really, really despise the way that the aid sector is run at the moment and the way in which it focuses on competition and profit, in some cases. And I – that’s why I look towards the issue of reparation, that’s why I look towards the issue of going beyond aid. And I was very pleased to hear Kathryn touching on looking at going beyond oil, the use of oil.

When I think about the way in which certain compa – organisations have worked in the Global South, again, I think to myself, you may have energy issues, for example, but instead, you’re going and taking the so-called aid money and plugging it into private companies to continue to provide failing and energy systems. I point to countries like Ghana and Nigeria, where we routinely have things such as light off, although my cousin did call me and say, “I hear you’re about to have light off in the UK. Do you have a generator?” That’s going to be interesting when that eventually happens.

But you see things like that happen there. Why would you not, if it’s not about sustaining aid in the way it is, look towards what is the best resource of energy that you could? Sun, why would there not be all of these companies, all of these so-called NGOs, organisations, working towards making sure that countries that they were meant to be re – helping to develop could sustain themselves through renewable energy and things like that? Why? Because again, it doesn’t benefit them, it doesn’t benefit that type of system.

And just to touch on the issue of the multiplicity of different voices. I do understand there’s so many different nuances, in terms of how we experience things, how we experience things here, as Black people, and how we experience things in – on the continent, from the Caribbean, different Western countries. But I would say there is a huge commonality, and whilst we shouldn’t look beyond those differences, in terms of explaining our experience, I think at the moment, we have one common enemy and that’s racism. And as long as we are joining together to fight that, I think, in some ways, some of those differences fall away, without taking away from our own individual experience, but absolutely making sure that we are facing, head-on, the hugest challenge that we have. Because, again, going back to my first point, there’s been so much work done to divide and rule us and stop us from challenging that together.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Thank you. Awino, I would just hold for another round of question. Over here, the gentleman at the front and the lady here in the turtleneck and the lady at the back in the – yeah, thank you.

Max

Great, thank you. Hi there, my name’s Max. I’m a Chatham House member. I have a question for the Right Honourable Member. You spoke earlier about how there’s been important distinction between diversity versus representation, just something I wanted to ask you about. ‘Cause right now, for example, people are making quite a lot of the fact that we have the most ethnically diverse Cabinet, political Cabinet in history, and that’s obviously fantastic, but when you look at the socioeconomic backgrounds of these people, for the most part they’re you know, private school educated, often upper-middle class people. We don’t have people from, you know, lower socioeconomic backgrounds, people who’ve grown up on council estates, really working class.

So, yeah, could you please speak about how – you know, a bit more about this distinction and how, with diversity, if there’s a danger of it becoming a kind of, shallow kind of diversity, a diversity of skin colour, but not a real diversity of people of different, you know, class backgrounds and that sort of thing. Thank you.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Thank you.

Empeacha Warnorag

Hello, I’m Empeacha Warnorag. I’m an – am a student at King’s College London. I’m doing international relations, and this is question is for Kathryn and Dr Awino. So, at the end of her speech, Kathryn mentioned the idea of, kind of, race and the link between race and power in international relations. And I’m just wondering whether either of you could expand more on the idea of how race translates into macro relations between different countries around the world in that sense. Thank you.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Thank you.

Nimiachi Badhe

I’ve really listened tonight, really enjoyed. I just wanted to add, in terms of perhaps the Black perspective on international relations. My name is Nimiachi Badhe, member of Chatham House. The first thing is I see – I take it that it is [inaudible – 56:16] to me. So, when I look at Africa, I look at it and I say to myself, is anything around happening in Africa that makes African Continent above the state? Now, if you look around the world, you see that the West have allowed and facilitated investment and the transfer of technology to countries where they are clear strategic buffer states. So, for instance, in recent times, we found out that, I’ll say this really quickly, Ukraine was supplying wheat to African countries’ refugees. Now, if you look at Africa, wheat is not our staple, it’s actually maize, millet, right? But strategically, Ukraine is on the border of Russia. If you look at Korea, South Korea, it has transferred technology from the United States, it is a buffer state, to North Korea. If you look at Taiwan…

Dr Jenna Marshall

I’m sorry, the…

Nimiachi Badhe

But that’s what I wanted to say, because…

Dr Jenna Marshall

The question please.

Nimiachi Badhe

…if you’re looking forward, that is the perspective and then, you have to ask yourself, so what does Africa have? If you’re looking at it in that sense, what does Afri – what is Africa buffering that would make someone spend 20/30 billion or trillion, as a buffer state, to ensure that they get money back?

The second point I was going to make was that – which is a question, was that in terms of reparations, it’s funny, I watched this – The Woman King, and I think everyone should go watch it, actually, it’s quite nice, but it’s very interesting about that. The question is, if you want – if we want reparation, then do we not have to deal with African history? Like, The Woman King taught me something…

Dr Jenna Marshall

I’m sorry, ma’am, can you please…

Nimiachi Badhe

Okay.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Very…

Nimiachi Badhe

I’m sorry, The Woman King taught me something that I never knew. I always thought the old oil empire stretched from where I am, in [inaudible – 58:11], right down to Sierra Leone, but apparently it didn’t, because this film tells us that. Dahomey thought it was independent and a kingdom of its own and that it was enslaved by the oil empire and the people in oil sold the people of Dahomey to the Europeans. And that’s why…

Dr Jenna Marshall

Ma’am…

Nimiachi Badhe

…I see the question…

Dr Jenna Marshall

…question please.

Nimiachi Badhe

…of reparations. Thank you very much.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Thank you.

Nimiachi Badhe

That’s all.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Okay, and then, finally, I just want to give some attention to the online questions from Saleh Kamil Saleh. “What are your views on African exceptionalism being used to justify bad governance by the partial use of legitimate criticisms of colonial wrongs?” So, that will be the fourth question. Kathryn, can we start with you, again?

Kathryn Nwajaiku-Dahou

Ooh, I always get the short straw, never mind. Let me take a few of these – the questions. Let me take the last one, on bad governance, and I link it to some of the things that were said earlier, you know. I think when we’re looking at Africa, our dear continent, that it’s important to look with clear eyes at Africa’s history and what Africa’s nation states, that we describe them today, are, how they became. And – because if you start to engage with a conversation around reparations, it’s important, also, to, rem – you know, to refer back to that history. And there’s some interesting work on reparations that really starts to think and force – you know, encourage us to think about the unit of the nation states as – and whether, really, that’s fai – it’s fai – it’s a fair unit to be basing an analysis or assessment of progress on, given the ways in which these nation states were created in the first place and their relative of recent creation.

So, that question of bad governance I would turn on its head, actually, and say that, for me, one of the big challenges that Africa has is even statehood and nationhood, what is that? Because I think it’s really critical when we’re thinking of, you know, what political imagination needs to look like, what ideas about the future of the continent needs to look like, that we engage, you know. What communi – what is that political community that is the nation state and is that something upon which we can build our future?

I think the observations on buffer states are very well received. I’m not in a position to answer them, but I would also turn that on its head and say perhaps that rather than continuing to think what’s in it for others, with respect to Africa’s future, Africa needs – Africans need to think about what is in it for us? What do we want and how do we want to build our future? And then, you know, engage that conversation about what – you know, who’s doing what, who’s scratching who’s back?

On the question of wheat and Ukraine, I mean, I think it’s really worth continuing to ponder this anomaly that someone suggested, you know, we have millet, so why wheat? I spent a long time in a country called Senegal and there’s a big debate there about the role which the President has played in pushing this, you know, narrative of we are reliant on Ukraine’s wheat and therefore, we need to con – because actually, if you think, why is Senegal reliant on wheat imports from Ukraine? Because of the whole economy around food production and its colonial overhang. You know, no Senegalese worth his salt would, you know, would not be without their baguettes. Bread, in French style, baguette bread is common as nut – and very poor nutritious value in Dakar. You know, but that…

Dr Jenna Marshall

Thank you…

Kathryn Nwajaiku-Dahou

Unravelling that is a political question and an historical one, sorry.

Dr Jenna Marshall

No, no, it’s okay, thank you. I’m just mindful that we have five minutes left. Awino, would you like to respond?

Dr Awino Okech

Yeah, sure. So, three quick points. On the question of race and international relationships, I would say Berlin Conference. I would say think about the ways in which Bolsonaro mobilised his campaign to come into office and the current contestations that are happening in Brazil right now, and the mobilisation of, you know, far right and fundamentalists and Evangelical churches, as part of the process of making a claim to a certain kind of Brazil, that is very anti-Black, very anti-queer, very anti-everything that is not presented as White Brazilian. But Berlin Conference, that is how you understand how race and IR is so intertwined and the legacies that continue from that.

Which goes to the point about the economy, right? How do we conceive of a moment in 2022 where you still have a bulk of West African French speaking countries whose economic structure is hardwired to a connection to France, right? That their currency is pegged to French currency. That their resources have to be sold to France first, before other people have a look in, right? So, those legacies are alive and well and of course, we must take responsibility for how it is that we want to reconfigure our relationships with the global world and within our own countries, but we cannot deny that this – the global economic infrastructure is so deep and strong and that the work to do it has to be – has to happen across contract – context and across countries. So, it’s not something that Kenya resolves on its own. It’s not something that East Africa resolves on its own. It requires a, sort of, global momentum to shift this on its head. And where have we seen evidence of that happening and it being thwarted? Cuba, right?

So, I think it’s important for us to be honest with each other, that the struggle here is about power. People don’t give power away, right? In order to get power, you have to wrestle with it, and that’s why I keep on saying that the place that we must look to are the voices, the scholarship, scholar activists, intellectuals, that are imagining these alternatives. I wouldn’t want us to leave here today thinking that there are no Africans who are thinking about alternatives, that there are no Africans who are challenging and questioning and raising different forms of ideas and alternatives, both in the international sphere, but also nationally to challenge their own governments. Those movements are alive and well and that thinking is alive and well.

But if we take seriously how power functions in our societies, this is not a task that we’re going to win alone and my brother, I would invite you, that if these are arguments you’re making, let’s join forces, because there has to be a reason why our voices are marginalised. And if we join forces with you and you’re making the same political, structural and policy arguments, then we have far to go together, right? So, this is not a question of what is the uniqueness of the Black perspective, if I can say this. If we’re both saying the same thing, let’s work together, because ultimately, what we’re trying to do here is to shift the infrastructure of power. It’s not to remove you from your own country. This world, or worlds, and these borders that we have created, artificial, at the end of the day. Thank you.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Thanks. I will give you one minute, sorry…

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP

I’m…

Dr Jenna Marshall

…to encapsulate tonight’s…

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP

Right, then.

Dr Jenna Marshall

…conversation.

Bell Ribeiro-Addy MP

Just going to answer a quick question about diversity and representation. There was a period of time where people talked a lot about increasing representation in politics and what they meant was for people who had the most lived experiences to be able to go into politics and to represent those views. Unfortunately, it’s now become an issue of diversity and so, people, just because they may look like that particular group, or identify it in some way, are being put there. And actually, they’re being put there on the basis that they may even argue against the group that they represent. So, we have to be really, really careful about that and make sure that we are – that representation or diversity is met with action, as opposed to just being a face in a place.

And just to end on this one point about reparations. People always ask, “How on Earth could you figure out exactly how you’re going to pay reparations? Who do you pay it to? When do you pay it? Who gets X, who gets Y? But I think the best way to start looking at it is that there is no amount of money, there is no amount of actions that you could take that could properly equate for what was done, in terms of slavery, in terms of colonialism. It is not possible, so you start where you can and that’s all, I believe, that people are asking for, in terms of the reparations movement. Asking people to start where they can and to make sure that wherever they can, that Black people, people of African descent, those in countries that were colonised right across the world, are put on an equal footing.

Dr Jenna Marshall

Brilliant, well said. Thank you, everyone. Can we just give our panellists a round of applause. Thank you, Kathryn.

Kathryn Nwajaiku-Dahou

Thank you very much, bye, bye.