Paper short abstract:

The paper interrogates how certain governance agendas such as the promotion of rule of law and democracy by the African Union should be understood and associated with a process of indigenisation, and how the African Union in the process produces a particular image of Africa.

Paper long abstract:

The objective of this paper is to interrogate how certain governance agendas such as the promotion of rule of law and democracy by the African Union should be understood and associated with a process of indigenisation, and how the African Union in the process contributes to a particular construction of Africa. The paper contributes to an understanding of how international agendas are translated into regional practices. It explores how regional organisations' rationales regarding the promotion of democracy and rule of law emerged, how these rationales are articulated into programmes of intervention, and how these programmes constitute a complex system of mechanisms, knowledges, strategies, techniques and procedures that give effect to the ambitions of the African Union's project. Through an analysis of the complex relation between rationalities and technologies, it will be possible to determine how the African Union borrows, depends upon, adapts and appropriates technologies from other places. More broadly, this approach will add another dimension to the understanding of how certain forms of knowledge contribute to the production of a particular image of Africa. Here, I am particularly concerned with the relationship between the processes within and around the African Union and the (re)invention of Africa.