For long periods, many African countries were unable to exert total dominion over their territories – providing a vacuum into which other global players muscled in and, as former South African president Thabo Mbeki put it in his famous “I am an African” speech, “act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of the day.”

On deeper scrutiny, this picture of a supine Africa in international relations, and how much it shapes the global geopolitics that acts out on continent – around control of natural resources, international terrorism, military resources, precious arable land, intellectual output, and lately innovation – is more complex than it appears.