ABSTRACT
International organisations operating in Africa are often subject to criticism. The Commonwealth and United Nations (UN), for example, are regularly accused of being ineffective, indecisive and even irrelevant (Knight, 2000; Watkins, 2014). While the European Union (EU) is also criticised on these grounds, it is perhaps more commonly belittled for ‘punching below its weight’ (Thomas, 2012) and failing to assume a more high-profile conflict management role in war-torn countries (Williams and Bellamy, 2005; Olsen, 2009).1
