In recent years, the notion of African agency has become a productive avenue for analysis within the China–Africa field. A growing body of scholarly literature reveals that a wide range of African actors – from presidents and political factions to bureaucrats, local governments and local entrepreneurs – are not merely passive agents to be acted upon but active players. Their various calculated actions, as much as those of their Chinese counterparts, co-constitute and co-shape the often-uncertain China–Africa realities on the ground.
Barney Walsh's Ugandan Agency within China–Africa Relations represents another welcome addition to this line of inquiry. By resorting to a “case within a case study” (p. 146) approach – that is, centring on two security issues, terrorism and oil investment, in East Africa's Uganda, Walsh unpacks how the Ugandan President has strategically exploited the Chinese presence in Uganda and the broader East African region to skilfully consolidate his domestic power position and deliberately drive a more militarized regional security and integration agenda that also primarily serves the interest of his power politics at home. Indeed, as one of the longest-serving presidents in Africa, Museveni has a proven track record of carving out space within Western partners’ changing interests for his political survival even prior to the re-emergence of southern partners like China on the stage.
While Museveni's machinations amid the “Global Mix” (p. 35) diplomatic framework and the new geographies of international development might not come as a surprise, Walsh's investigation fills an important gap, both empirically and analytically, in the existing China–Africa literature, that is, the regional nature and implications of Chinese engagement in Africa. He shows, rather convincingly, that given the “naturally regional nature” (p. 151) of African politics, the Chinese presence is inevitably “sucked” (p. 151) into (intra-)regional dynamics and conditions both within regional institutions and among neighbouring countries. The interactions between Chinese engagement and the politics of regionalism in Africa as well as the attendant intended and unintended consequences for individual states, regional organization and integration remains a much neglected yet highly productive area of China–Africa enquiry; and Walsh's book marks a valuable scholarly attempt to explore it.
The book consists of five chapters. After the introduction, chapter one explores China's direct and indirect interactions with a wide range of key actors in Uganda's political economy and how Museveni exploits these dynamics for his own regime consolidation. Chapter two offers both a historical and contemporary account of China's role in East Africa and the development of the East African Community (EAC). It argues that this engagement, particularly in terrorism and oil, provides “operating space” (p. 61) for Museveni to position himself and his country as central to the EAC's regional security dynamics and development ambitions. Chapter three takes a step forward to empirically detail how the Ugandan President strategizes the Chinese linkages with the two security issues to advocate “a militarised response” (p. 105) domestically and regionally that helps maintain and further his hegemonic standing. The concluding chapter offers some relevant reflections on the implications of this monograph for the study of African agency.
Methodologically, Walsh develops his analysis primarily through fieldwork interviews with a broad array of key local informants in Uganda's political assemblage, ranging from politicians, diplomats and bureaucrats to journalists and local citizens. Compared to this impressive access to Ugandan and other East African sources, interview materials with Chinese interlocutors appear relatively limited. While this might be understandable given Walsh's primary goal of an “Africa-centric analysis” (p. 3), some of the most intriguing discussions on the entanglements of Chinese presence with local patronage dynamics indeed draw on his occasional access to crucial Chinese informants, for instance, private business players (pp. 37–41).
Walsh's book also complicates our understanding of China's foreign policy in Africa, which continues to be framed within non-interference despite its globalizing outreach. Historically, this principle was not espoused in East Africa as strictly as Beijing nowadays persistently portrays it (pp. 62–68). Beijing's non-interference is also often accompanied by its self-claimed commitment to support regional organizations. The China–EAC realities, nevertheless, illustrate that this commitment, if not entirely tokenistic, remains largely selective because of Beijing's continued preference for “pro-sovereignty nation-state engagement” and “practical reality that power currently remains at the national state level in the African context” (p. 151).
While Walsh attends to various Chinese players’ activities in Uganda and East Africa, the heterogeneity involved appears to be relegated to a secondary consideration so that they could be lumped into a single category of “Chinese overarching presence” (p. 28) that constitutes a “structural context” in which African leaders operate. However, this analytical abstraction sometimes tends to produce a reified characterization that something quintessentially “Chinese” exists in these activities. A comparative sensitivity is therefore desired in the book or future research to further complement and nuance Walsh's scrutiny – for instance, to what degree do Indian, Arab or Western business players interact differently with Uganda's patron–client system from their Chinese counterparts, and with what kind of different consequences?
That said, Ugandan Agency within China–Africa Relations remains a fascinating study of African elites’ political manoeuvres in an increasingly diversified landscape of international development. It is suitable for undergraduate and graduate courses on South–South cooperation, China–Africa, Chinese foreign policy and African politics, among others. Its jargon-light writing style also renders it accessible to anyone curious about the ever-shifting field of China–Africa relations.
