Foreign academies best bet for Africa’s ‘digital’ diplomacy

“A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip.”

I invoked this famous quote, which largely reflects an age when the diplomatic profession thrived solely on verbal dexterity, to preface to my remarks to a consultative meeting of directors of Africa’s Foreign Academies gathered in Nairobi on December 16-17, 2019.

The meeting was an apt response to the urgent need to forge innovative collaborations and partnerships in training a new cadre of diplomats to steer the continent through the turbulent digital revolution.

Certainly, foreign service academies are a new phenomenon in African diplomacy. Indeed, Kenya’s Foreign Service Academy was only founded in 2007. But its graduates are already driving the country’s ongoing campaign for a non-permanent seat in the United Nations Security Council, which has focused public spotlight on Africa’s overall foreign policy and diplomacy.

Foreign service academies have to retrain and retool Africa’s diplomats to cope with the effects of the digital age, which has spawned trends and theories, engendered a shift from traditional diplomacy and irreversibly changed the face and practice of diplomacy.

Foreign service think tanks have to respond to three shifts currently shaping Africa’s diplomacy. First, the 4th Industrial Revolution and the ensuing digital age have changed the configuration of power in the diplomatic sphere.

Traditional diplomats were weaned on the technologies of ‘soft power’ that primarily sought to prevent war. In the 21st Century, diplomats have to navigate two new forms of power. At the one level is a hybrid power known as “smart power,” a combination of hard power and soft power strategies.

States using the smart power approach engage both military force and all forms of diplomacy, investing heavily in building alliances, partnerships, and institutions” to expand their influence and the legitimacy of their actions.

Second, the digital age has witnessed the brutal surge of a nastier form of power known as “sharp power”, defined as the use of manipulative diplomatic policies by one country to influence and undermine the political system of a target country. All great powers without exception are using sharp power.

Saliently, both smart power and sharp power thrive on a radical change in the nature of diplomacy from a state-centric club to a multiple network characterised by a diversity of actors and communication methods.

Notably, the digital revolution is propelling the “twitter diplomacy” involving a new class of the twitterati or avid or frequent users of the social media application Twitter, whose messages include foreign policy-related topics. Over the past three years, most global leaders have joined the class of twitterati, becoming active in the Twittersphere.

It all started with Barack Obama who, as Senator of Illinois, became the first global leader to join Twitter in 2007. By 2013, roughly 78 per cent of the 193 United Nations member states had some form of official presence on Twitter. By 2018, the number hit an all-time high of 97 per cent.

Today, President Donald Trump is by far the most popular world leader on Twitter with roughly 60 million followers. In Africa, Rwanda President Paul Kagame has been involved in heated Twitter exchanges with the foreign media since 2011.

Trump’s America exemplifies a Twitter diplomacy gone awry as leaders continue to risk exposing their personal opinions, preferences, and emotions and can declare their unfiltered position to the public without consulting expert advice.

This calls on Africa’s Foreign Service academies to introduce mandatory social media training for government leaders, and help update the government’s social media guidelines, procedures and protocols.

African academies need to enhance collaboration and partnerships in training and skills development to produce the techno-savvy African diplomat of the digital age.

Secondly, digital diplomacy is thriving on the rise of the think tank as the white knights of the 21st Century diplomacy.

Africa’s foreign service academies have to harness the power of think tanks to ride the crest of digital diplomacy in the 21st Century.

Today, there are over 7,500 think tanks worldwide, with 1,984 (over 50 per cent) of them in the United States by 2018.

Think tanks reflect the capacity of nations to project their soft power, smart power and, more increasingly, sharp power.

Today, think tanks not only produce independent intellectual outputs to influence public policy, but are also pervasively engaged in negotiation, communication, information-gathering and promoting friendly relations in international affairs.

But their role is not without controversy. As the adage goes, he who pays the piper calls the tune. Because think tanks face serious resource constraints, they can be, metaphorically speaking, your hired guns, used in soft power and even sharp power charm offensive, as witnesses and safe space in diplomacy.

So far, Africa has the weakest think tank capacity, and by extension the weak soft power, smart power and sharp power capacities. Sadly, the continent has often become a target of think tank diplomacy from other powers.

Finally, for decades, African diplomacy has rested on the three philosophical planks of solidarity, quiet diplomacy and consensus built on Pan-Africanism. But the 2018-2019 period has witnessed the erosion of consensus and the rise of rogue diplomacy. Although Kenya won 37 votes, more than the requisite three-quarters of the votes, to become African Union nominee for a non-permanent seat in the UN Security Council, Djibouti has since defied the African consensus.

This is likely to weaken Africa’s power in global diplomacy, exposing the continent to predatory tendencies of rival great power in the new geopolitics.

Foreign service academies should use Africa’s new peace and security architecture to forge linkages and collaboration to counter the perils of sharp power and rogue diplomacy.

Professor Kagwanja is CEO, Africa Policy Institute. Remarks made during the Consultative Meeting of African Directors of Diplomatic Academies, Convened by the Foreign Service Academy of Kenya, Nairobi, on December 16-17, 2019.