ABSTRACT
This chapter makes a conceptual and an empirical contribution to geo-economics research. It analyses the foreign policies of the second-most powerful states in sub-Saharan Africa: Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya and Nigeria. Particular attention is paid to how these states react to South African hegemony or, in other words, how they ‘contest’ against the region’s primary power. The chapter also advances our conceptual understanding of geo-economics by answering the question of whether geo-economics is about economic means replacing military means in power politics. It is shown that geo-economics and geopolitics cooccur in the foreign policies of the aforementioned states. In particular Ethiopia and Kenya would unlikely to pursue major cross-border infrastructure projects, boosting their respective subregional leadership, without military means.
