Strategic Crossroads: Africa

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

“Strategic Crossroads: Africa Edition” will be taught by a former Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Africa and for Regional/Multilateral Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, who is now a retired Senior Foreign Service Officer serving as a Diplomatic Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Diplomacy. The course will explore why some foreign powers are expanding their relationships across Africa for development, security, and economic policy reasons, and why others are backing away. It will begin with an examination of what Africa offers to its global partners – for example, the human resource capital provided by a long-term demographic boon, port and other infrastructure benefits given Africa’s vast coastline, flexibility to operate to protect security interests, abundant natural resources, and opportunities for foreign investment. Although Africa has attracted foreign interest for decades and even centuries, dynamics have shifted dramatically in the 21st Century. Countries from the Middle East, China, India, Türkiye, and others have adjusted their approach and presence given their own interests. United States foreign policy towards Africa has also evolved over time, with a major transition now underway from a long-standing humanitarian focus to one centered more on trade and security. The course will cover how the United States and other actors view the continent, how they advance their interests, how they deploy scarce resources, and what an increasingly crowded space means for Africans and their partners. The course will place special emphasis on East Africa as the geographic seam with the Middle East and given its unique blend of security, cultural, and economic relationships with an array of foreign players. For example, the security situation in places such as Somalia and Sudan are of direct concern to countries across the Red Sea, and ports in Djibouti, Kenya, and Tanzania serve as a gateway to the Indian Ocean and onwards to Asia. Building on knowledge gained throughout the course, students will conduct their own deep dive assessment of a country or subregion, exploring both the realities of global competition and the tradeoffs faced by policy makers managing limited resources.