Obama's Modest
Inroads in Africa
http://www.cfr.org/africa-sub-saharan/obamas-modest-inroads-africa/p31059?cid=rss-analysisbriefbackgroundersexp-obama_s_modest_inroads_in_afri-070313
For Africans, the
most significant aspect of President Obama's trip may be that he actually made
it, directing new U.S. attention to a continent that too many Americans tend to
see as marginal. In his first term, the president did little to counter this by
spending less than twenty-four hours in one African country, Ghana. However,
with this visit, the president highlighted African successes in governance,
democratization, and the mobilization of economic opportunity. His Power Africa
initiative, which seeks to light up the continent, also has the potential for
mobilizing interest among the American business and policy communities. So does
his Trade Africa initiative. For a larger American audience, Obama's visit to
the Door of No Return on Gorée Island (Dakar), through which thousands of
Africans boarded slave ships for the New World, underscored the message that
Africa helped make America what it is today. From such perspectives, the trip
may have been as important for Americans as for Africans.
But beyond the
photo ops, was the visit positive for Africa and the president? There were two
potential shadows as the trip approached. The first was the impending death of anti-apartheid
icon Nelson Mandela. The second was an unfavorable comparison between president
George W. Bush's extensive attention to Africa and the more limited one of his
successor.
Continent-wide,
but especially in South Africa, much of the public focus was on the
hospitalization of Nelson Mandela rather than on the American president.
President Obama responded to the African mood by underscoring his admiration
for Mandela, his role model. An early goal of the trip was for the two to meet
face-to-face—South Africa's first black president with that of the United
States—but that was not to be, as Mandela's health failed to improve and he
became the focus for media frenzy, provoking widespread South African anger.
From the trip's beginning, Obama said he would meet with Mandela only if it
accorded with the wishes of the family: "I don't need another
photo-op," he said. As Mandela's condition declined and a meeting was
clearly not possible, instead Obama paid tribute to Mandela's spiritual and political
legacy by meeting with his family and visiting the ailing former leader's jail
cell on Robben Island. Obama's Cape Town speech, with its encomiums for
Mandela, its focus on youth and education, and its calls for a U.S. partnership
with Africa was well received. Furthermore, his deft management of the Mandela
meeting and his modest bearing may have helped dispel the perception among some
Africans that Americans are arrogant and insensitive--a notion often fed by
U.S. presidential visits with their security requirements that routinely
disrupt daily life.
George W. Bush's
signature Africa program was the President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief
(PEPFAR), which has treated more than seven million, mostly African, victims of
the disease. Twelve of the fifteen PEPFAR focus countries are in sub-Saharan
Africa. But while Washington has devoted billions of dollars to the program, it
is now being trimmed because of budget exigencies and a polarized Congress.
Meanwhile, Africans see PEPFAR as a success: they welcomed President Obama to
Cape Town with "Thanks, PEPFAR" signs. Many Africans ask why Obama
does not mount his own initiative of comparable scope. That's unfair. President
Bush's access to the huge amount of funding that underpinned PEPFAR is now
unimaginable in the partisan, fiscally challenged Washington of 2013.
Nevertheless, President Obama was unstinting in his praise for his
predecessor's program while pushing ahead with his inherently less dramatic
agenda for the continent. His Power Africa and Trade Africa initiatives use
already existing tools to establish and enhance a partnership with Africa in
place of the assistance model of PEPFAR.
Small issues can
trip up a presidential visit, and Obama did not entirely avoid them. In
Senegal, the president took the opportunity to stress that gay marriage, which
is anathema in largely homophobic sub-Saharan Africa (except in South Africa,
where it is legal), is an important civil rights issue. In reply, Senegal's
president said that his country is not prepared to decriminalize homosexual
relationships, a move that the African media delighted in portraying as the
Senegal "David" standing up to the American "Goliath."
Similarly, heated public demonstrations in South Africa over controversial U.S.
intelligence gathering, Guantanamo, and drones, could have been problematic.
But Obama largely defused the issue when he said that he was not prepared to
"scramble the jets because of a twenty-nine-year-old hacker."
Moreover, media in the United States and Africa have speculated that the
purpose of the Obama visit was somehow to counter the Chinese, in echoes of
Cold War competition. Obama did not take the bait. Instead, he said that the
United States welcomed Chinese interest in Africa, as well as that of India or
Brazil.
If the symbols
worked well and pitfalls were largely avoided, what of the
"substance" of the Obama visit? The president unveiled Power Africa
and Trade Africa, two major initiatives that will require resources from a
cash-strapped Congress. According to the White House Fact Sheet, more than
two-thirds of sub-Saharan Africa's people lack access to electricity; in rural
areas, the share is 85 percent. To achieve universal access by 2030, the
International Energy Agency estimates that $300 billion in new investment will
be required. Power Africa aims to double the number of people with access to
electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. The initiative takes a holistic approach to
power production, emphasizing domestic sources such as oil and gas reserves,
and capturing geothermal, hydro, wind, and solar energy. The initiative will
also work on increasing the infrastructure for power generation and
transmission and expanding power grids. The first partner countries for the
initiative are Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, and Tanzania. Funding
is expected to come from a variety of sources, including $7 billion over five
years from U.S. government agencies, as well as the private sector, where
commitments already stand at more than $9 billion.
Trade Africa will
emphasize intra-African trade, concentrating first on the East African
Community, which includes Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, Tanzania, and Uganda, and
increased exports to the United States. The initiative will also encourage
regional integration to streamline trade across borders, and trade
competitiveness through public-private partnerships.
In addition,
President Obama committed to the extension of Bill Clinton's African Growth and
Opportunity Act (AGOA), which allows African products easy entry into the
United States. The upcoming AGOA forum in Addis Ababa in August will focus on
bolstering trade between the United States and Africa, and lay the groundwork
for AGOA renewal by 2015. He also introduced the Washington Fellowship to
expand the Young African Leaders Initiative launched in 2010. The Fellowship
will open opportunities for five hundred African young people to study and
intern in the United States each year. These initiatives, which are likely to
be uncontroversial and low-cost, will build directly on a program already in
place that has successfully identified talented future leaders. If not as
dramatic as the Bush administration's PEPFAR, President Obama's package of
Power Africa, Trade Africa, and an expanded Young African Leaders Initiative,
if achieved, could leave Africa a better place.