Britain and Africa: The Diplomatic Past, Present, and Future

Speaker: Prof Nick Westcott, Professor of Practice in Diplomacy at SOAS University of London.

Abstract: Drawing on 50 years of engagement with Africa as a diplomat and academic, Nick Westcott will locate Britain’s relationship with Africa in its historic context, assess how African countries themselves have evolved in the 60 years since independence, and discuss how this has influenced the nature of Britain’s current diplomatic, economic and security involvement with the continent. Building on this context, he will consider the likely future trajectory for Africa and how British policy should respond to that, in the light of both Britain’s and African countries’ strategic and national interests. In particular it will assess the relative importance of development, investment, trade, security, democracy and geo-strategic balance in the future relationship, and whether the current British policy represents a fair balance between those interests.

Bio: Dr Nick Westcott is currently Professor of Practice in Diplomacy at SOAS University of London. After completing a PhD in African history at Cambridge, he served as a British diplomat for 35 years from 1982-2017, with postings in Brussels, Tanzania, Washington DC and as British High Commissioner to Ghana and Ambassador to Cote d'Ivoire, Burkina Faso, Niger and Togo. From 2011-17 he was the Managing Director for Africa and later for the Middle East in the EU's External Action Service in Brussels. He subsequently worked as Director of the Royal African Society from 2017-23 and is a Visiting Fellow of the Oxford Martin School and an Academic Visitor in the Department of Politics and International Relations at the University of Oxford.

Nick Westcott is a guest of Jonathan Fisher, Nathalie Raunet, Niheer Dasandi (IDD) and Molly Sundberg (University of Stockholm) in the context of their ESRC funded project entitled ‘Global Britain, Backlash, and the Politics of “values” in Contemporary UK-Africa Policy

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• For further details please contact Maurice Beseng: m.beseng@bham.ac.uk