The African Theater of the Middle East Conflict

In this engaging study of African diplomacy, Nigerian scholar Nwankwo Nwaeziegwe revisits the issue of cooperation between Arab nationalist governments and the nations of Sub-Saharan Africa. The book clinically explores the proper bases, character, and implications of Arab-Sub-Saharan relations through the lens of Arab nationalist diplomatic initiative and collective Black African development initiatives. It presents the Sub-Saharan African with the option of either continuing to regard the Arabs as a people with a common aspiration or putting them in the same neo-colonial basket as he has tended to put Europeans. The book’s main objective is to arrive at a proper understanding of the basis of Arab interest in Sub-Saharan Africa from the Egyptian Revolution of 1952, which brought the first Arab nationalist to power, and 1993, the year of the epoch-making Declaration of Principles (DOP) between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

Most importantly, the book examines the other face of the African predicament, which previous scholars of modern Africa have neglected. Ironically, the Arabs may have participated in undermining Sub-Saharan Africa’s development by promoting the institution of slavery, which was just as ruthless as the European experience of that phenomenon, if not worse. Nevertheless, due to Europe’s overwhelming dominance in the colonial era, the Arab role has often been downplayed against that of Europeans.