Maritime Diplomacy: Advancing Africa’s Strategic Interests

Maritime diplomacy is an evolving yet underappreciated tool in modern international relations, being essential in defining and advancing maritime security agendas at national, regional, and global levels through a mix of cooperative, suasive, and coercive strategies that promote national maritime interests. This article conducts a qualitative conceptual and policy analysis to position maritime diplomacy as a vital, evolving instrument in contemporary international relations, blending soft, smart, defence, forum, technological, and cyber diplomacy to advance national, regional, and global maritime security agendas. Focusing on Africa’s littoral states, which face constrained naval capabilities and persistent insecurities at key chokepoints like the Bab el-Mandeb strait and the Cape Sea Route (CSR), it elucidates how cooperative, persuasive and coercive strategies enable the protection of sea lines of communication and the blue economy. Descriptive mapping of the Cape Sea Route serves as a case study and critical synthesis of African frameworks, showing how maritime diplomacy operationalizes continental goals despite challenges such as “sea blindness” (disregard of maritime issues) and limited resources; it identifies gaps in current practices and proposes policy recommendations for enhanced regional cohesion, infrastructure investment, and multilateral engagements. Drawing on secondary sources including legal documents, strategies, scholarly literature, and geopolitical case studies, the article integrates international relations theory with maritime security studies to reveal untapped diplomatic potential, urging African actors, especially South Africa, to prioritize it for strategic autonomy.