Though used by many, the term ideology has attracted pejorative connotations from scholars, politicians and writers. The surge of this pejorative meaning can be traced to the encounter between Napoleon and political theorists during the French Revolution. Notwithstanding the pejorative meaning historically attached to the concept of ideology, a stream of contemporary academics have risen to challenge the veracity of these pejorative claims; especially in an era of the much touted ‘end of ideology’ and extreme pragmatism. The defining context of most of these ‘post-ideology’ scholars has been a fusion of thought and action and argue for the existence and malleability of ideologies, not ideology. Yet, a review of the literature reveals their asymmetrical focus on the semiotic rather than the behavioural. Nonetheless, this gap is that of emphasis rather than omission. This is because, even though they focus more on the formative and hermeneutic dynamics of ideologies, there is an inherent provision in all these theories that underscores the necessity of actual manifestations of thought. The perimeter component in Michael Freeden’s ‘ideological morphology’ is a typical example of this emphasis gap. The situation gets very complex when the study of ideology is taken to unfamiliar territories like Africa. According to William Zartman, it is a quagmire of uncertainties. Most studies on ideology in Africa have not mince words on how complex and diversified it is from Western ideological analysis. Ideologies in Africa have proven to encapsulate a complex constellation of concepts and meanings from different grand ideological families. Yet, scholars continue to refer to ideologies is Africa as Western ideologies prefixed with the word Africa; such as African socialism and African liberalism. Thus far, even if we admit these vocabulary categorisations of ideology, the ‘Africaness’ in them are yet to be adequately explained. It is against this dynamic backdrop that this paper seeks to understand the role of ideology in Africa’s international relations, thereby constituting the action in the though-action synergy of ideology and prioritising their interdependency. I ask the fundamental question: what has been; and what is the role of ideology in Africa’s international relations? It is the hope of this paper to feed into the broader debate of agency and dependency in Africa’s international relations.