http://www.fpif.org/blog/the_us_and_africa_the_next_four_years
The U.S. and Africa: The Next Four Years
By: Conn Hallinan
Over the next four years the U.S. will face a number of foreign policy
issues, most of them regional, some of them global. Conn Hallinan has been
outlining and analyzing them. His first report covered the Middle East.
Africa is probably the single most complex region of the world and arguably
its most troubled. While the world concerns itself with the Syrian civil
war and the dangers it poses for the Middle East, little notice is taken of
the war in the Congo, a tragedy that has taken five million lives and next
to which the crisis in Syria pales.
Africa represents 15 percent of the world’s population, yet only 2.7
percent of its GDP, which is largely concentrated in only five of 49
sub-Saharan countries. Just two countries—South Africa and Nigeria—account
for over 33 percent of the continent’s economic output. Life expectancy is
50 years, and considerably less in those countries ravaged by AIDS. Hunger
and malnutrition are worse than they were a decade ago.
At the same time, Africa is wealthy in oil, gas, iron, aluminum and rare
metals. By 2015, countries in the Gulf of Guinea will provide the U.S. with
25 percent of its energy needs, and Africa has at least 10 percent of the
world’s known oil reserves. South Africa alone has 40 percent of the
earth’s gold supply. The continent contains over one-third of the earth’s
cobalt and supplies China—the world’s second largest economy—with 50
percent of that country’s copper, aluminum and iron ore.
But history has stacked the deck against Africa. The slave trade and
colonialism inflicted deep and lasting wounds on the region, wounds that
continue to bleed out in today’s world. France, Britain, Germany, Italy,
Spain and Portugal sliced up the continent without the slightest regard for
its past or its people. Most of the wars that have—and are—ravaging Africa
today are a direct outcome of maps drawn up in European foreign offices to
delineate where and what to plunder.
But over the past decade, the world has turned upside down. Formerly the
captive of the European colonial powers, China is now Africa’s largest
economic partner, followed closely by India and Brazil. Consumer spending
is up, and the World Bank predicts that by 2015 the number of new African
consumers will match Brazil’s.
In short, the continent is filled with vibrant economies and enormous
potential that is not going unnoticed in capitals throughout the world.
“The question for executives at consumer packaged goods companies is no
longer whether their firms should enter the region, but where and how” says
a report by the management consultant agency A.T. Kearney. How Africa
negotiates its new status in the world will not only have a profound impact
on its people, but on the global community as well. For investors it is the
last frontier.
The U.S. track record in Africa is a shameful one. Washington was a
long-time supporter of the apartheid regime in South Africa and backed the
most corrupt and reactionary leaders on the continent, including the
despicable Mobutu Sese Seko in the Congo. As part its Cold War strategy,
the U.S. aided and abetted civil wars in Mozambique, Angola, and Namibia.
Americans have much to answer for in the region.
Militarization
If there is a single characterization of U.S. policy vis-à-vis Africa, it
is the increased militarization of American diplomacy on the continent. For
the first time since World War II, Washington has significant military
forces in Africa, overseen by a freshly minted organization, Africom.
The U.S. has anywhere from 12,000 to 15,000 Marines and Special Forces in
Djibouti, a former French colony bordering the Red Sea. It has 100 Special
Forces soldiers deployed in Uganda, supposedly tracking down the Lord’s
Resistance Army. It actively aided Ethiopia’s 2007 invasion of Somalia,
including using its navy to shell a town in the country’s south. It is
currently recruiting and training African forces to fight the extremist
Islamic organization, the Shabab, in Somalia, and conducting
“counter-terrorism” training in Mali, Chad, Niger, Benin, Cameroon, the
Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Gabon, Zambia, Malawi, Burkina Faso,
and Mauretania.
Since much of the U.S. military activities involves Special Forces and the
CIA, it is difficult to track how widespread the involvement is. “I think
it is far larger than anyone imagines,” says John Pike of
GlobalSecurity.org.
As a whole, U.S. military adventures in Africa have turned out badly. The
Ethiopian invasion overthrew the moderate Islamic Courts Union, elevating
the Shabab from a minor player to a major headache. NATO’s war on
Libya—Africom’s coming-out party—is directly responsible for the current
crisis in Mali, where Local Tuaregs and Islamic groups have seized the
northern part of the country, armed with the plundered weapons’ caches of
Muammar el-Qaddafi. Africom’s support of Uganda’s attack on the Lord’s
Resistance Army in the Democratic Republic of the Congo resulted in the
death of thousands of civilians.
While the Obama administration has put soldiers and weapons into Africa, it
has largely dropped the ball on reducing poverty. In spite of the UN’s
Millennium Development plan adopted in 2000, sub-Saharan Africa will not
reach the program’s goals for reducing poverty and hunger, and improving
child and maternal healthcare. Rather than increasing aid, as the plan
requires, the U.S. has either cut aid or used debt relief as a way of
fulfilling its obligations.
At the same time, Washington has increased military aid, including arms
sales. One thing Africa does not need is any more guns and soldiers.
There are a number of initiatives that the Obama administration could take
that would make a material difference in the lives of hundreds of millions
of Africans.
First, it could fulfill the UN’s Millennium goals by increasing its aid to
0.7 percent of its GDP, and not using debt forgiveness as part of that
formula. Canceling debt is a very good idea, and allows countries to
re-deploy the money they would use for debt payment to improve health and
infrastructure, but as part of an overall aid package it is mixing apples
and oranges.
Second, it must de-militarize its diplomacy in the region. Indeed, as
Somalia and Libya illustrate, military solutions many times make bad
situations worse. Behind the rubric of the “war on terror,” the U.S. is
training soldiers throughout the continent. History shows, however, that
those soldiers are just as likely to overthrow their civilian governments
as they are to battle “terrorists.” Amadou Sanogo, the captain who
overthrew the Mali government this past March and initiated the current
crisis, was trained in the U.S.
There is also the problem of who are the” terrorists.” Virtually all of the
groups so designated are focused on local issues. Nigeria’s Boko Haram is
certainly a lethal organization, but it is the brutality of the Nigerian
Army and police that fuels its rage, not al-Qaeda. The continent’s
bug-a-boo, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Meghreb, is small and scattered, and
represents more a point of view than an organization. Getting involved in
chasing “terrorists” in Africa could end up pitting the U.S. against local
insurgents in the Niger Delta, Berbers in the Western Sahara, and Tuaregs
in Niger and Mali.
What Africa needs is aid and trade directed at creating infrastructure and
jobs. Selling oil, cobalt, and gold brings in money, but not permanent
jobs. That requires creating a consumption economy with an export
dimension. But the US’s adherence to “free trade” torpedoes countries from
constructing such modern economies.
Africans cannot currently compete with the huge—and many times subsidized
industries—of the First World. Nor can they build up an agricultural
infrastructure when their local farmers cannot match the subsidized prices
of American corn and wheat. Because of those subsidies, U.S. wheat sells
for 40 percent below production cost, and corn for 20 percent below. In
short, African needs to “protect” their industries—much as the U.S. did in
its early industrial stage—until they can establish themselves. This was
the successful formula followed by Japan and South Korea.
The Carnegie Endowment and the European Commission found that “free trade”
would end up destroying small scale agriculture in Africa, much as it did
for corn farmers in Mexico. Since 50 percent of Africa’s GNP is in
agriculture, the impact would be disastrous, driving small farmers off the
land and into overcrowded cities where social services are already
inadequate.
The Obama administration should also not make Africa a battleground in its
competition with China. Last year US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
described China’s trading practices with Africa as a “new colonialism,” a
sentiment that is not widely shared on the continent. A Pew Research Center
study found that Africans were consistently more positive about China’s
involvement in the region than they were about the U.S.’s.
Jacob Zuma, president of South Africa, recently praised the continent’s
“relationship with China,” but also said that the “current trade pattern”
is unsustainable because it was not building up Africa’s industrial base.
China recently pledged $20 billion in aid for infrastructure and
agriculture.
One disturbing development is a “land rush” by countries ranging from the
U.S. to Saudi Arabia to acquire agricultural land in Africa. With climate
change and population growth, food, as Der Spiegel puts it, “is the new
oil.” Land is plentiful in Africa, and at about one-tenth the cost in the
U.S. Most production by foreign investors would be on an industrial scale,
with its consequent depletion of the soil and degradation of the
environment from pesticides and fertilizers. The Obama administration
should adopt the successful “contract farming” model, where investors
supply capital and technology to small farmers, who keep ownership of their
land and are guaranteed a set price for their products. This would not only
elevate the efficiency of agriculture, it would provide employment for
local people.
The Obama administration should also strengthen, not undermine, regional
organizations. The African Union tried to find a peaceful resolution to the
Libyan crisis because its members were worried that a war would spill over
and destabilize countries surrounding the Sahara. The Obama administration
and NATO pointedly ignored the AU’s efforts, and the organization’s
predictions have proved prescient.
Lastly, the Obama administration should join with India and Brazil and
lobby for permanent membership for an African country—either South Africa
or Nigeria, or both— in the UN Security Council. India and Brazil should
also be given permanent seats. Currently the permanent members of the
Security Council are the victors of WW II: the U.S., Russia, China, France
and Great Britain.
In 1619, a Dutch ship dropped anchor in Virginia and exchanged its cargo of
Africans for food, thus initiating a trade that would rip the heart out of
a continent. No one really knows how many Africans were forcibly
transported to the New World, but it was certainly in the tens of millions.
To this day Africa mirrors the horror of the slave trade and the brutal
colonial exploitation that followed in its wake. It is time to make amends.
Received on Mon Nov 26 2012 - 22:04:04 EST
