Locating Africa in the Second Cold War
The geopolitical economy of Kenyan polyalignment
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9309856 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tim Zajontz (0000-0002-7868-9640, University of Freiburg, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Pages | 1-21 |
| Publication date | 2025-06-18 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Third World Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0143-6597 • E-ISSN: 1360-2241 |
| Publisher | Taylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/01436597.2025.2516050 |
| OpenAlex | W4411427014 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 5 |
| References cited | 41 |
Africa is often treated as peripheral to contemporary geopolitics. This article challenges this reading by conceptualising polyalignment as an extraverted form of African agency, which is not solely reactive to, but co-constitutive of, the Second Cold War. Successive Kenyan governments have diversified the country’s external relations to broaden (geo)political and developmental scope. Yet, polyalignment is shown to be not only a foreign policy but also a ‘class project’, reflecting the interests of dominant social forces in the Kenyan state-society complex. The article examines the enabling-constraining geopolitical economy of Kenyan polyalignment with a focus on infrastructure, development finance and the digital economy. Kenya’s integration into China-oriented infrastructure networks has benefitted politically connected elites and has prompted competing Western connectivity initiatives. Financial polyalignment through expansive sovereign borrowing from a host of lenders has turned into polydependence, leaving the society exposed to the structural powers of foreign creditors. Substantial Chinese presence in Kenya’s digital sector is increasingly becoming incompatible with Kenya’s longstanding security partnership with ‘the West’. Cautioning against overly optimistic readings of African agency in the current geopolitical conjuncture, the article finds that polyalignment has afforded opportunities for some Kenyans but, simultaneously, engendered socio-economic contradictions, complex polydependence and mounting geopolitical vulnerability
Cold war · Development economics · Economics · Economy · Geopolitics · Kenya · Political science · Politics · African history and culture studies · Historical and Contemporary Political Dynamics · International Development and Aid
The political economy of Kenya
The Oxford Handbook of Kenyan Politics
The State and Power
Towards an assessment of the legacy of Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta
World Report 2013
Rails through rangelands
Clientelism at work? A case study of Kenyan Standard Gauge Railway project
From Loan-Financed to Privatised Infrastructure? Tracing China's Turn Towards Public–Private Partnerships in Africa
The geoeconomics of infrastructures
Chinese neoglobalization in East Africa
Weaponized Interdependence
Getting the territory right
Africa–Europe cooperation and digital transformation
Now the cry was Communism’
From quiet diplomacy to cold war politics
The Common Framework and its Discontents
Why the West’s alternative to China’s international infrastructure financing is failing
Fitting China in
Africa in the world
Africa+1’ summit diplomacy and the ‘new scramble’ narrative
Hustler Populism, Anti-Jubilee Backlash And Economic Injustice In Kenya’s 2022 Elections
Goodbye Washington Confusion, hello Wall Street Consensus
Kenya's foreign policy in context (1963-2015)
China, region-centric infrastructure drives and regionalism in Africa
Infrastructural territorialisations
Ethnic-sectoral cleavages and economic development
Win-win' contested
Geopolitical economy and the production of territory
The Second Cold War
| Unique citing works | 5 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 5 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 5 |