The book relates the untold history of Australia’s engagement with Africa, while answering curiosity related to Australia’s sudden interest in African continent.
The book fills a gap in both the study of Africa’s global engagement with emerging countries, as well as Australia’s engagement with African states, with its empirical originality and comparative contribution. Australia has presented itself as a ‘friend from the south’ without colonial baggage, interested in a long-term partnership in trade and development. In this context, Australia is only one in a field of many ‘new’ players seeking enhanced engagement with Africa since the end of the Cold War. At its core, the book suggests that the motivation for other countries’ engagement with African states is to secure resources for domestic economies and to an extent, offset and counter the influence of strategic rivals. While Australia is also an emerging and ‘new’ actor in African affairs, its case is rather unique in that the country’s engagement with Africa is not about securing resources or countering the influence of strategic rivals. This book argues that Australia does not know what it wants in Africa because of its inability to assess its long-term strategic interests on the continent. For almost one century (the 1880s until around the early 1970s) Australia’s engagement with Africa was marked by support for colonialism and sympathy with racism and apartheid. while immigration, globalization, trade, terrorism, and climate change continue to bring Africa and Australia closer together, Australian’s lack of strategic understanding of its interests in African states continues to hamper its engagement with Africa.- ISBN: 978-981-13-3422-1
- Editorial: Palgrave Macmillan
- Encuadernacion: Cartoné
- Fecha Publicación: 12/05/2019
- Nº Volúmenes: 1
- Idioma: Inglés