This episode of The IR thinker features an incisive conversation with Dr Madalitso Zililo Phiri on what it means to think International Relations from Africa rather than merely about Africa. We interrogate whether an African IR theory exists, how concepts such as Ubuntu, communalism and non-statist authority can reframe sovereignty and power, and what this implies for applying African ideas beyond the continent. The discussion probes Africa’s marginalisation in multilateral decision-making, the contemporary mutations of Pan-Africanism, and South Africa’s foreign policy through a realist lens. We also explore how liberal and mainstream constructivist IR traditions have historically excluded African experiences, what a decolonial constructivism might look like in practice, and whether scholars should pursue a distinct “African school” or treat Africa as a generative site for pluralising the discipline as a whole.
Dr Madalitso Zililo Phiri is a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the South Africa–United Kingdom Bilateral Research Chair in Political Theory at the University of the Witwatersrand. A former Visiting Fellow at the Centre of African Studies and Research Associate at Wolfson College, University of Cambridge, and a Carnegie Corporation Fellow via the SSRC’s Next Generation of Social Science in Africa programme, his research spans the political economy of racialised welfare in South Africa and Brazil, the sociology of race, and Black political thought. He has taught African Studies, Sociology, Politics and Research Methods at Cambridge, Wits, Pretoria and Rhodes universities, bringing a decolonial and critical theoretical lens to the study of power, knowledge and global order.
Publications:
The Colour of Inequality in South Africa and Brazil: making sense of social policy as reparations
Monuments and Memory in Africa: reflections on coloniality and decoloniality
Against Imperial Social Policy: Recasting Mkandawire’s Transformative Ideas for Africa’s Liberation
History of Racial Capitalism in Africa: Violence, Ideology, and Practice
Content
00:00 – Introduction
02:05 – Does African IR Theory Exist? Epistemologies Beyond the West
06:27 – Ubuntu, Communalism, and Reimagining Sovereignty
10:45 – Applying African Concepts to Non-African Issues
15:01 – Authority Beyond the State: African Approaches to Power
19:48 – Africa’s Exclusion from Multilateral Decision-Making
25:13 – Pan-Africanism in 2025: Dead or Evolving?
29:26 – South Africa’s Power Politics Through a Realist Lens
34:24 – Liberal IR Theory’s Historical Exclusion of Africa
37:46 – Constructivism: Opening or Limiting Space for African Voices?
41:22 – Postcolonialism and Decolonizing IR Theory
47:22 – Which IR Theory Dominates African Scholarship Today?
50:14 – The Risks of Essentializing “African IR Theory”
52:57 – Continental Focus vs. State-Centric Analysis in African IR
56:54 – Distinct African School or Contribution to Global Pluralism?
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