African Indigenous approaches to statehood and sovereignty

The objective of this paper is to centre Indigenous political thought from the African continent, showing its global applicability and contributions to international relations. Theories and ideas from African thinkers, both historical and current, are often seen as uniquely and solely applicable to the continent, and discussed and taught only within that context. Yet from Kwame Nkrumah to Ibn Khaldun and Sabelo Ndlovu-Gatsheni, African scholarship remains relevant. Learning from Indigenous governance mechanisms and state governance inspired by these Indigenous structures, such as in Botswana or Somaliland, this paper will specifically focus on African Indigenous conceptualizations of statehood and sovereignty, how these influence current African-centred scholarship on international relations, and the applicability of these theories to international relations more broadly. It will, to the extent possible, explore how the state (and nation) was understood historically and how this has come to shape and understand statehood and sovereignty today. It will recognize the effects of colonialism on the production and consumption of knowledge, aiming to contribute to the discussion on Global IR, its shortcomings and advantages. Most importantly, the paper will highlight the importance and contributions of Indigenous systems of governance, focusing on their ability to reshape, disrupt, enhance, and challenge dominant theories and disciplinarity. In doing so, the paper departs from the predominant scholarly publications that analyze Indigenous approaches to governance to explain the perceived weakness of statehood and sovereignty on the continent.