From tyrants to turbines: Obama’s subtle shift in African foreign policy

What is Africa’s problem? To many, it is power and the failure to use, manage and transfer it peacefully.

So it is not surprising that last week’s US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington focused extensively on power in Africa — only that the focus was on electricity, not the continent’s politics.

The biggest announcement from Washington was that private US companies had agreed to invest $14 billion in US Power Africa, an initiative by President Barack Obama’s Administration to increase electricity output and access on the continent.

Power Africa, which started in 2013 with $7 billion over five years, now has more than $26 billion in promised funding. It has attracted the support of the World Bank (whose President Jim Yong Kim has thrown in $5 billion in cash, guarantees and advisory services) and the Swedish government ($300 million).

There are now agreements worth 2,800MW sewn up with another 5,000MW potentially on the way. Buoyed by the billions of dollars, Power Africa has vowed to “up its game”, in the words of President Obama, by expanding its target to producing 30,000MW and putting 60 million African households on the grid.

It is a significant amount of money to address a significant problem. About seven out of every 10 Africans do not have access to regular and reliable electricity and the continent cannot industrialise and create jobs by candlelight or wood.

A pattern has emerged in recent years in which geopolitical blocs seeking to tap into Africa’s potential organise conferences, invite its leaders, and compete to see how much money they can promise in investment and aid.

The Japanese, Chinese, Europeans and now the Americans have done it. Even the Gulf States have opened their eyes to Africa and the Russians had one such summit on the cards before planes started falling out of the skies in Ukraine.

In the diplomatic game of “my Africa fund is bigger than your African fund”, the $33 billion announced in Washington last week therefore puts America back into play in the race for the hearts, minds and — let’s face it, the markets and minerals from Africa. China, if you must compare, has a $20 billion Africa fund.

Most significantly from the Washington summit, however, was the almost complete lack of focus on the other form of power — politics — and the absence, in many places on the continent, of its restraints such as good governance, rule of law, accountability, and democracy generally.

The Washington summit was also remarkable for the almost total absence of “democracy” on the agenda. That is important and disturbing.

The first time President Obama addressed himself to Africa’s leaders, in Accra, Ghana, in 2009, soon after he took office, he proclaimed, loftily and eloquently, that Africa needed strong institutions, not strong men.
Six years later, many of the same strong men were in Washington, from Angola’s Dos Santos, Equatorial Guinea’s Teodore Obiang Nguema, to Gambia’s eccentric brute, Yaya Jammeh, with not a drop of his victim’s blood on his spotlessly white flowing robes.

As expected, Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe and Eritrea’s Isaias Afwerki were not invited but this was only symbolic; it was impossible to throw a stone at the White House last week without hitting a despot, a dictator, an election thief, or a corrupt tyrant from Africa. America has not given up on dreaming of a democratic and prosperous Africa where citizens are respected and rights protected. The Washington summit, however, represents a subtle but important shift in focus and tactics of engagement.

Washington’s interventionist foreign policy has failed spectacularly over the last decade in Afghanistan and Iraq. In North Africa, what looked like tantalisingly green shoots of democracy sprouting after the ouster of Hosni Mubarak in Egypt and Muammar Gaddafi in Libya have turned out to be rival clans or sects simply shooting at each other. From Sirte to Syria, the Arab Spring has turned into a winter of discontent.

Tunisia, where the Arab Spring started, and where pre-existing conditions were only waiting for a spark by the time Mohammed Bouaziz set himself on fire, has been relatively more successful in its transition from Ben Ali.

REGIME CHANGE

Similarly, the pro-democracy foreign policy agenda in sub-Saharan Africa has suffered. Term limits and regime change remain up in the air in many countries, from DR Congo to Rwanda to Burundi and the wave of anti-homosexuality legislation in Uganda, Malawi, Nigeria and elsewhere is only the more visible crest of a wave to ebb back civil liberties in many countries across the continent.

After successfully mobilising the African Union to oppose the International Criminal Court charges against President Uhuru Kenyatta and his deputy William Ruto, African leaders have had the temerity to propose an alternative court in which they would be exempt — perpetrating the very impunity the ICC was meant to counter.

In supping with some nasty tyrants, and trying to find mutual grounds of co-operation with African leaders, the US is showing the kind of pragmatism we have come to expect from — you guessed it — China!

This is not to say that the US is adopting China’s see-no-evil, hear-no-evil approach. There are other important differences: China’s government-to-government bilateral engagements are breeding grounds for corruption while America is leading through Wall Street, and business-to-business engagements.

The US has also pledged money to support African governments improve their peacekeeping capabilities. This is useful and supports attempts by African governments to act as the first line of defence in regional conflicts.

In terms of democracy, however, there is growing acknowledgment that while citizen agency can be nurtured and inspired by outsiders, it can never be imported or downloaded via YouTube.

America is changing the way it relates to Africa. It is a subtle shift away from preaching politics and democracy to its leaders, to inspiring its youth and its entrepreneurs to drive the change that the continent needs.
It is also likely to shift resources and attention away from traditional areas — reports indicate that some of the money invested in Power Africa has been drawn from democracy and governance within the US Agency for International Development.

Those with a long-term view will argue that the most significant summit in Washington this month was not that of the heads of state but the one that ended a few days before, of 500 young men and women, part of the Young African Leaders Initiative.

In addition, the US is keen to meaningfully engage the continent’s entrepreneurs — the people who create jobs and drive growth in Africa.

After decades of watching ageing African dinosaurs, their shopaholic wives and sleepy ministers, the continent’s entrepreneurs like Aliko Dangote, Mo Ibrahim and economic brains like Donald Kaberuka finally got a chance to show that Africa is open for business.