ABSTRACT
Industrialised countries have responded to the economic and security problems that plague Africa. That they remain engaged is, according to some international-relations theorists, surprising. Indeed, if countries were calculators, always determining their actions by how they could incrementally improve their national interest, they would have walked away from Africa a long time ago. The continent's economic and political marginality is such that, in many ways, it does not matter to the industrialised world. Africa's economic product is only 1% of world product and its share of the latter has been in decline for some time.
