Business and nationalism: foreign policy attribution

Are there potential African analogies to the way that recent anti-Japanese nationalism in China included calls in China for boycotts of Japanese products?

The issue illustrates the potential rapid (and rabid) emergence of a nexus between high geopolitics and the ostensibly apolitical sphere of private firms and consumers:

* So it is that contested Beijing-Tokyo (and Taipei) claims to the Senkaku ('Diaoyu') Islands have led recently to campaigns in China to boycott Japanese electronics, cars and other goods, and indeed to violence targetting such. Moreover, iPhone mapmakers are now more conscious that hosting a map stating one status or another may be taken as a corporate endorsement of a state position.

* So too French winemakers over twenty years ago suddenly found their produce boycotted by Australasians not because of anything relating to how it was made (or tasted) but -- as my colleague Stephanie Hare reminded us -- as a mark of protest against the French government's persistence with South Pacific nuclear tests.

But this blog focusses on Africa. What scope exists for acute periods of high nationalist (or racial) sentiment, stirred up by popular reactions to foreign policy-level / state-to-state issues, to manifest as boycotts or violence against firms and individuals -- not because of any conduct on their part, but only by virtue of their association with the country whose foreign policy actions or positions are seen locally as problematic?

[We can put aside South Africa's recent government regulation compelling vendors to label goods made in Israeli settlements beyond the 1948 borders as made in the 'occupied Palestinian territories'. That is a different case, one of state action, founded in a classic foreign policy position dispute, affecting private commercial conduct.]

Bigger transnational firms may be advised to develop a 'corporate foreign policy' to anticipate or respond, among other things, to cases where they face public pressure in a host state as a result of being associated, in local minds, with the geopolitics of their home state.

South African retail and telecoms firms doing strong business in Nigeria this year experienced a brief period of turbulence as Nigerians responded to a diplomatic dispute between the two countries over visa issues.

But I think that in the main in Africa, future boycotts or violence that we may see targetting foreign firms or businesspeople are more likely to be relatively unorganised (and so possibly more dangerous) and based on local grievances about perceived exploitation or comparative success, than about indignation following the attribution, in effect, of their countries' foreign policy.

The saying that 'all politics is local' is particularly apposite in this sense. In most conceivable African scenarios, a firm or its brands or staff are far more likely to be exposed on the basis of local social, environmental or governance performance than local anger at the Great Games of its home state.

[By 'foreign' I here mean non-African: there is no shortage of intra-African xenophobia, for example against Congolese smalltraders in north-eastern Angola, Somali stallkeepers in South Africa or Burkinabe migrants in Ivory Coast.]

Foreign firms and businesspeople are often vulnerable to being political scapegoats -- especially as economic times get tougher -- but in general, and until the link is explicitly made in some way in some context, it is embassies rather than businesses that will feel the force of any local protest at some state-to-state insult or insinuation.

Jo

Ps - This post ties in with last week's (on dilemmas for CEOs speaking out on politicised policy issues).

It also relates to a recent one on corporate diplomacy in Africa -- briefly discussing the potential, across the continent, for locals to attribute many of the actions of individuals or firms to their government of origin. The example there (Chinese nationals and attribution to Beijing) might create image management issues for the government, although it is also arguable that local perceptions of Beijing's influence might restrain groups from violent acts against Chinese nationals and stimulate greater local government protection. In this sense, being a firm or businessperson attributed to a major power may provide both a shield and a source of vulnerability from organised or spontaneous violence or boycott.

[Speaking of 'attribution', I'd like to acknowledge the recent discussions with work colleagues on which this post has partly drawn].