“China is winning the hearts, minds and resources in sub-Saharan Africa”
The United States needs to actively engage sub-Saharan Africa in a more meaningful way, not just in dialogue. Our “start-and-stop” foreign policy since the end of the Cold War in 1991 does not sit well with governments, already suspicious of our agenda in the region. Over the years when we needed these countries to support our issues at the UN we twisted their arm. However we were not always proactively engaging them, and at times resorted to using threats of aid cuts to get our way.
U.S. policy towards sub-Saharan Africa may have served us well in the past, but we are being trumped by China with our long list of conditions for democracy and transparency; by the sanctions we impose when countries fail to meet them. We need to engage the sub-Saharan African countries keeping in mind an understanding of our cultural differences. If we want to gain influence there we need to lower the bar on all the conditions we impose or we will lose out to China.
In my meetings with sub-Saharan African officials while I was U.S. ambassador, and in subsequent interviews with African leaders for my book, I heard repeatedly that the United States is considered a “fair-weather friend.” The United States needs to be consistent and have a dependable foreign policy, if we are going to help these countries get out of their abject poverty; institute programs that aim to rebuild trust and friendship. With these objectives in mind, President Obama signed the Presidential Policy Directive on sub-Saharan Africa on June 14, 2012, for his new strategy in the region.
President Obama has traveled to sub-Saharan Africa once since becoming president, visiting the country of Ghana in 2009. Analysts note that there has been a limited engagement of the region as a whole by the Obama Administration. The writer Mwangi Kimenyi on February 27, 2012 noted, “The support of democratic transitions and improved governance are at the core of Obama’s administration’s stated relations with Africa”.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is currently on her fourth trip to sub-Saharan Africa with stops in six countries: Senegal, South Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Malawi, and South Africa. The Secretary plans to promote the new Presidential Policy Directive on sub-Saharan Africa: strengthen democratic institutions; spur economic growth, trade, and investment; advance peace and security; and promote opportunity and development. Although Secretary Clinton has previously visited several other countries in sub-Saharan Africa, President Hu Jintao of China has also been active in the region, visiting over twenty countries since 2003. The U.S. needs to spend more time in sub-Saharan Africa because these countries represent forty-nine votes at the United Nations, a potentially powerful voting bloc.
Secretary Clinton, on her first stop in Dakar at the University of Cheikh Anta Diop, used the opportunity to set the stage for U.S. policy in sub-Saharan Africa, and indirectly chided China for their aggressive approach to extract Africa’s wealth as colonialists have done in the past. In the August 1, 2012 Christian Science Monitor article “Hillary Clinton goes to sub-Saharan Africa… ” the writer Howard LaFranchi noted her saying, “partnership, not patronage” is the policy that President Obama unveiled in his 2009 speech in Ghana. “I will be talking about what that means – about a model of sustainable partnership that adds value, rather than extracts it,” she added. Those comments seemed to refer to China, which in recent years extracted large quantities of natural resources. The Secretary further noted “The days of having outsiders come and extract the wealth of Africa for themselves, leaving nothing or very little behind, should be over in the 21st century.” In presenting the Presidential Policy Directive on sub-Saharan Africa, one expert said the “new strategy isn’t sounding all that different to Africans – especially if it remains policy with little concrete application”.
A year earlier on September 9, 2011, Teo Kermeliotis in the article “Is the West losing out to China in Africa?” noted that Secretary Clinton, during her trip to Zambia, was asked about China’s growing influence in Africa. Replying she said “that Africa must beware of a new colonialism”, further noting “We saw that during colonial times it is easy to come in, take out natural resources, pay off leaders and leave”. Her comments then created a stir, since China claimed it has poured billions into Africa in recent years, and has become the main trading partner, investor and provider of infrastructure projects.
The U.S., in my opinion, abdicated sub-Saharan Africa after the Cold War ended in 1991, beginning with cut-backs in our foreign affairs programs, closing several embassies, and reducing the presence of USAID in Africa. At the same time we increased our attention to the former Soviet Eastern Bloc countries, and very rapidly built more than a dozen new embassies, although the real threat to U.S. security was in Africa. Secretary of State Warren Christopher noted in the 1995 Congressional Budget hearings that “we should not forget that foreign assistance is a real bargain for American taxpayers”, and added, “we spend less than 1 percent of the total federal budget on foreign assistance — about 12 cents a day for each American citizen — in contrast to about 18 percent still spent on defense.” Asserting that our “diplomatic ‘field offices’ abroad also constitute an invaluable early-warning intelligence system,” the secretary added “their rapid-fire political, military, and economic reporting is essential to the crisis-prevention work of Washington national security decision-makers.”
Responding to questions about whether our foreign assistance made any real difference in developing countries and what would happen if we just stopped giving it, Secretary Christopher responded, “Both we and they would suffer. Our foreign assistance programs are intended to promote the kind of economic growth and political stability that are critical to U.S. national security and economic well-being. Failing to provide aid to developing countries would therefore jeopardize our national security.” The Secretary pointed out that “it costs a hundred times as much to deal with humanitarian crises as it does to prevent them.” For example, it cost the United States more than $2 billion to deal with Somalia, and $1 billion to address Rwanda’s problems.
Secretary Christopher, under pressure from Congress, recommended that USAID close down twenty-eight missions abroad, shutter ten U.S. Information Agency (USIA) offices, and cut more than three thousand job positions; USIA’s activities and programs merged with the State Department programs. The Secretary talked about “the principle of universality,” wherein the United States must maintain an official diplomatic presence in every country where it is welcome. I would have gone further and said that we should maintain a presence in every country that is a voting member at the United Nations. Operating “leaner” in carrying out our foreign affairs was the goal of Congress and State Department.
China is active in every sub-Saharan African country, and has been diligently working for more than fifty years to make friends, and gain access to the natural resources. China is receiving almost 60 percent of Sudan’s production (which is the third-largest in sub-Saharan Africa). China also receives oil from Angola, Nigeria, Republic of Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, Liberia, Chad, and Kenya. China receives almost one-third of its oil from Africa.
China also has trade deals with over forty sub-Saharan African countries. China’s economic investment in sub-Saharan Africa has brought it many new friends thanks to its policy of not interfering with the internal affairs of these countries or questioning their stand on democracy, human rights, and the rule of law. Even the presence of rogue and corrupt governments or Islamic extremists in some of these countries has not deterred China’s quest for those countries’ oil, gas, mineral resources, commodities, and agricultural land. The United States, on the other hand, has withdrawn from countries in sub-Saharan Africa because those countries lack democratic institutions, have perceived security concerns, because of congressionally mandated budgetary cutbacks, or because a country has been labeled as a supporter of terrorism and had economic sanctions placed on them.
China will do whatever it takes to protect its multibillion-dollar deals with the African countries. While we withdrew in the 1990’s China started to unify the continent through trade missions and ministerial exchanges. In October 2000, China launched its first such ministerial meeting in Beijing with a number of invited African leaders. The second ministerial meeting held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia followed in December 2003. Since then China has held ministerial events, every three years, alternating with Beijing and an African destination. Leaders from forty-eight African countries attended the third Sino-African Summit in November 2006 in Beijing. The fourth Summit was held in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt in November 2009, with leaders from fifty African countries attending. There China pledged more than $15 billion in loans for capacity building in the African countries, and promised to cancel the debt of some of the poorest African nations. In the Summit held in July 2012 China pledged $20 billion in credit to be used for infrastructure and other development. The Guardian article of August 3, 2012 noted President Hu Jintao as saying “China would continue to support African nations’ independent development paths”.
CNN: China's growing influence in Africa is creating nervousness in the West, say analysts.
As a result of China taking an interest in the African countries without pre-conditions, its influence has continued to grow. China’s deputy foreign minister, Zhou Wenzhong, recently told an interviewer, “Business is business. We try to separate politics from business… You [the West] have tried to impose a market economy and multiparty democracy on these countries which are not ready for it. We are also against embargoes, which you have tried to use against us.”
The United States needs to more actively engage the sub-Saharan African countries, embrace their cultures, and understand the thousands of years of tribal history. Above all we need to win back the respect and friendship we enjoyed in Africa for over fifty years. We cannot give up our long-established democratic principles and tenets of freedom. However we should not try to mold every country into our form of democracy, which may not take hold in a tribal society. Above all, we need to improve our diplomatic relations and reestablish our economic ties, or we will be trumped by China.
The new U.S. paradigm, the Presidential Policy Directive on sub-Saharan Africa, must not come with an inordinate amount of conditionalities for these struggling countries. The U. S. needs a consistent foreign policy; understand that our form of democracy may not take hold everywhere. We must listen to what these countries want to achieve and work with them, rather than exclude them from economic programs for not complying with our standards. It is necessary that we deliver a focused public diplomacy message reaching out to the people more directly. We need to also follow through on our promises. Having said this, we still must face the jihadist threat in Africa that wants to destroy the western culture, and our form of democracy.
For further information about sub-Saharan Africa, U.S. foreign policy, trade, aid, and sustainable economic development; the challenges faced as U. S. Ambassador to Mauritius, Seychelles and Comoros, please refer to my book “When the White House Calls”.