“Abandoning diplomacy for confrontation.....is a dive over a cliff,” - Antonio Guterres, UN Chief

A review of the article titled ‘The EU, Economic Partnership Agreements and Africa’  by  Sir Ronald Sanders Sanders (2015) article titled “ The EU, Economic Partnership Agreements and Africa ” is a call for Africa to think twice when it comes to this trade agreement called Economic Partnership Agreement(EPA) with the European Union(EU) as we have often been reminded that not all that glitters is gold. Sanders declares in his main argument that the ‘EPAs are unfair’ and goes ahead to explain how this unequal relationship is detrimental to the interests and future trade prospects of the African states made worse by the fact that European states negotiate as a single entity while their partners have to do it individually as a country. Sanders asserts that there is credible projection that Africa could be the next leading source of global economic growth hence the reasoning behind ‘Agenda 2063’ as a vison of the African Union. With this, the continent should not think lightly of...

Brief History The state of Israel is in Western Asia with neighbors such as Lebanon, Syria, Egypt, Jordan and the Palestinian territories. Tel Aviv is the economic and technological nerve of the state whereas her government seats in Jerusalem which was recently proclaimed by the Trump Administration as the Capital of Israel. In 1947, the  United Nations   adopted a  Partition Plan for Palestine  recommending the creation of independent Arab and Jewish states and an  internationalized Jerusalem . The plan was accepted by the  Jewish Agency , and rejected by Arab leaders. The following year, the Jewish Agency  declared the independence  of the State of Israel, and the subsequent  1948 Arab–Israeli War  saw Israel's establishment over most of the former  Mandate territory , while the  West Bank  and  Gaza  were held by neighboring Arab states. Israel has since fought  several wars  with Arab count...

According to Gilson (2007), Japan’s Peace Consolidation Diplomacy is meant to advance the state’s international profile while tackling domestic pressure over best use of aid and the role of the Japanese military in the international arena. For a country that has been nominated over ten times as a non-permanent member to the United Nations Security Council, more international engagement is necessary since Japan’s desire to be a permanent member on the Council is no secret. Peace Consolidation Diplomacy is not limited to Japan but is more of a global debate or tact in opting to combine humanitarian intervention and aid with peacekeeping. Japan’s Peace Consolidation Diplomacy has three pillars with the first being promotion of the peace process which can be through mediation or election assistance, the second pillar is accomplishing domestic stability and security through activities such as disarmament, demobilization as well as removal of landmines and the final pillar is humanitarian ...

In the period 1947 to 1988, there was an ideological battle between the United States and the Soviet Union which dominated international politics with the former aiming at the global containment of communism. On the other hand, anticolonial nationalism was taking place in Africa which was under Western European imperial control hence becoming a target for the two contending powers. The liberation struggle that followed led to the demise of colonialism and attainment of independence by African states (Ohaegbulam, 1992). The United States’ fear of the spread of communism got them involved in a number of domestic politics that escalated the civil wars and inter-state conflicts in places like Zaire between 1960 to 1978, Angola from 1975 to 1988, and the Ogaden war between Ethiopia and Somalia from 1977 to 1978. The bearers of American interests on the continent included rebel leaders such as Jonas Savimbi in Angola while those who were looked at as a threat to those interests among them ...

Global and domestic policies of the United States can be traced as far back as the period of Atlantic Slave Trade. Ani and Ojakorotu (2017) assert that slave trade was institutionalized by the European slave merchants who in collaboration with their African mercenaries began to export many Africans to America, Europe and West Indies. With time the slaves started resisting and did so successfully in Haiti from 1791-1803 under the leadership of Touissant L’Ouverture who defeated the French.      After American independence of 1776, continued interest in the developments on the African continent by those of African descent in the Americas led to the formation of groups such as The Council on African Affairs (CAA), the American Negro Leadership Conference on Africa (ANLCA) and the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC) that worked within the United States to support African causes between 1939 and 1977. The Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) over the years emerged as an ...