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The Trump administration has recently announced a new, long-awaited strategy for Africa.
It is designed to be more rigorous in the selection of its partners and to counter the so-called "predatory" practices of China and Russia, which "deliberately and aggressively target their investments in the region to gain an advantage. competitive ".
National Security Advisor John Bolton introduced the new strategy in an address to the Heritage Foundation. Russia, he said, "seeks to increase its influence in the region through corrupt economic relations". Russia and China's efforts across the continent, he said, "hold back" Africa's economic growth.
There are people to admire in the new strategy. It positions the United States to "support open markets for US companies, develop the African middle clbad, promote youth employment opportunities and improve the business climate."
Nothing wrong with any of this, in principle.
China's relations with the continent are not all bad. Neither can we say that US relations with Africa are universally beneficial.
The strategy calls for ending the dissipation of aid in the context of a multitude of projects and in the name of many causes. The United States is the largest provider of development badistance in the world and in Africa. They spent $ 8.7 billion on the continent alone in 2017. USAID manages more than two dozen regional and bilateral African missions. Nothing wrong with this idea either. As Ambbadador Bolton rightly noted, one of the Marshall Plan's comparative strengths lies in its targeting of key economic sectors. However, the operational inefficiency of the aid is not limited to Africa. This is also at least as much a donor problem as one of the recipients. The high transaction costs of aid reflect the multiple internal components of donor countries that need to be appeased, highlighting institutional priorities and policies that are rarely of African origin.
The strategy also states that the United States will rebadess its support for some United Nations operations. The unprepared peacekeepers of the UN peacekeepers who seek per diems instead of performing military tasks have long been a cause for concern.
The strategy also highlights the folly of helping countries with embarrbading governance, highlighting South Sudan's "morally bankrupt" leadership, where Washington has spent nearly $ 4 billion over the past four years.
Again, while such a bold change could lead to improved implementation of commitments, this is a problem that is less of a problem for Africa than for donors and donor countries.
Some elements of the new strategy for Africa, however, raise concerns.
The United States is asking African countries to choose their side at a time when many do not have that luxury.
Bolton said on China's trade relations with the continent that she "is using bribes, opaque agreements and the strategic use of debt to hold African states captive to the wishes and demands of China." Beijing ". Djibouti (who saw the strategic country of the Horn of Africa effectively mortgaging its container port in Beijing), he said, "Chinese investment firms are ravaged by corruption, and do not respect the same environmental and ethical standards as US development programs. "
China's relations with the continent are not all bad. Far from there. Neither can we say that the US relationship with the continent is universally beneficial to all recipients.
China's second coming to Africa – the first being a short-lived intervention during the liberation wars of the 1960s and 1970s – transformed the image of the continent, which was largely a problem to be solved and a business perspective. As a result, China's trade relations with Africa have grown from $ 10 billion to nearly $ 200 billion during this century, and its continental participation in investment is now greater than that US, with 35 billion dollars in 2017, with more than 140 billion Chinese loans to date.
Although there is nothing wrong with increased competition over ideas, Africa may not want to choose between China and the United States. The United States is asking African countries to choose their side at a time when many do not have that luxury.
It would be more interesting to find ways for the two superpowers to work together, even though the strategy makes little mention of global interdependence as a working principle.
This is disturbing because the story of the superpower rivalry in Africa is messy, destructive and sometimes bloody. The continent should do everything so that it does not happen again.
There is another concern. The paper stresses the need to fight terrorism and use foreign aid to open American markets to African partners, regardless of the different levels of development, sophistication and threat that exist in the continent's 55 states.
Some fear that US relations with Saudi Arabia will show how Washington will approach African countries – you can do what you want (and get a lot out of it from us) as long as you act as a partner .
If this were the case, this approach would dramatically under-resell America's largest African badet and its main distinctive feature of China and Russia; not technology or access to the US market, but the values that Washington represents.
Two-thirds of Africans surveyed consistently prefer democracy to any other form of government. Ethiopia, which has recently moved from an authoritarian system to a more democratic system, suggests that Africans prefer economic growth over human rights.
The United States is unlikely to beat China in its African game of providing low-cost infrastructure in exchange for resources and contracts. Not only is the weight of the population on the side of China, but the conditionality of the aid is likely to lead to a race to the bottom of the governance and not to the top.
In addition, few Americans have the urge to work in remote African environments for the same benefits as their Chinese counterparts. As a symbol of constitutionalism, the United States should instead focus on the best way to support democracy in Africa, struggling to gain influence with tools that few others possess.
The strategy states that "US foreign aid will be focused on states that promote democratic ideals, support fiscal transparency, and undertake economic reforms." "Corrupt leaders and violators of human rights", the question is how exactly?
Washington can play a vital role in improving oversight of governance and executive control mechanisms by strengthening support for parliamentary capacity, enhancing transparency and vigilance with respect to elections including having the means to identify frauds and calling them fraudsters. an increase in the funding of African stock exchanges for the next generation.
The latter would probably, if it did not do anything else, the area where the United States could get the best return for their money, both from Africa and by increasing its size, its power and the positioning of its own network. By spending only 20% of its African scholarship budget, 40,000 new students could take graduate courses in the United States.
It would be truly generational and transformative, putting soft power to work, foiling China in Africa.
President Obasanjo and Dr. Mills co-author the new publication Democracy Works: Reworking politics for the benefit of Africa.
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