Short Abstract

Türkiye and the Gulf are usually studied from such as Ankara, Doha and Abu Dhabi. This panel reverses the lens, asking how African states, brokers and publics negotiate, exploit and refuse these partnerships, and what that reveals about agency, aid and the language of South–South solidarity.

Long Abstract

African governments have rarely been passive recipients of the attention paid to them by Türkiye, and Gulf States Much of the scholarship on these engagements is nonetheless written from the capitals that dispatch aid, troops and investment. In it African states appear as terrain to be contested, not as parties that set terms, weigh rival suitors and decline offers. This panel inverts that optic. It asks what these encounters look like from Mogadishu, N'Djamena, Ouagadougou, Dar es Salaam and Pretoria, and what actors on the continent make of them, ministries and presidencies, customary authorities, religious associations, brokers, contractors and publics.

We invite papers grounded in fieldwork, interviews or archival research that address the negotiation of aid, security and infrastructure agreements and the domestic coalitions behind them; the intermediaries, faith-based and secular, who translate external programmes into local terms; competition among external partners as an opening for African bargaining; the vocabularies of partnership, solidarity and brotherhood, and whom they serve; and what becomes of projects once the ribbon has been cut and the delegation has flown home.

The panel also welcomes reflection on method and position. Research on Turkish and Gulf engagement is concentrated in institutions in the countries doing the engaging and in policy registers, and the panel treats that concentration as a question in its own right. Contributions from scholars based in Africa are particularly encouraged.

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