USA Africa Dialogue Series - Adekeye, Peter Fabricius’s Civilising Mission

 

Peter Fabricius's Civilising Mission

Adekeye Adebajo

 

Foreign policy analyst Peter Fabricius recently wrote an acerbic defence of the US-Africa summit held last December ("Joe Biden's US-Africa Summit Should Be Assessed On its Merits – not on Ideology", Daily Maverick 28 December 2022). In the process, he castigates Alvin Botes, Nontobeko Hlela, and David Monyae for "un-analytical thinking" requiring "greater nuance," and complained that "there remains a persistent strand of scepticism about anything the US does here." The phrase that most caught my attention, however, was Fabricius's observation that Islamic extremists being confronted by Western armies in Africa were "surely an enemy to all civilised people." While reasonable people would condemn the wanton killing of civilians in the name of religion, Fabricius's use of the loaded term "civilised people" in the context of a condescending critique of three black analysts, echoes British imperial poet, Rudyard Kipling's notorious 1899 call on Western nations to "take up the White Man's burden."

 

His own article is ironically devoid of the nuance and analytical thinking he accuses his critics of lacking. Fabricius takes Washington's promises at face value, without critically investigating whether the US has delivered on similar pledges in the past.  He uncritically touts former president Barack Obama's Power Africa initiative, unveiled at the previous 2014 US-Africa summit. Obama had pledged $7 billion to double electricity to 20 million Africans households, but by 2016, his "signature project" had generated less than 5% of new power. With Washington currently granting $100 billion to Ukraine – nearly double the amount pledged to 55 African countries over three years – Fabricius does not seem to notice any inconsistency in America's approach.  

 

He then calls for "more nuance in interpreting the growing military presence" of external powers in Africa. But contrary to his erroneous claim that "the proliferation of foreign military bases in Djibouti..began as an effort to counter Somali pirates in the Gulf of Aden", France has maintained a military base in the country since 1932 as part of its strategy to preserve its colonial influence in Africa. The US established its own base in Djibouti in 2001 not to track Somali pirates as Fabricius claims, but to wage its post 9/11 "War on Terror" against Yemeni and Somali terrorists.

 

Fabricius then ridicules claims that "the US and other counterterrorist operations have been the cause of the rise of violent jihadism and other ills in West Africa and the Sahel." However, anyone with knowledge of the NATO intervention in Libya (led by Washington, Paris, and London) in 2011, would be acutely aware that the heavily-armed militants who were fighting for assassinated Libyan autocrat, Muammar Qaddafi, have since destabilised Mali, Niger, Burkina Faso, and Chad, and continue to do so.

 

Few would disagree with Fabricius's statement that poor governance in Africa has contributed to Islamist militancy. But to offer mono-causal explanations that seek to blame all of Africa's ills on internal factors while absolving Western actors of any culpability, is simply disingenuous. Fabricius's observation that "Most of the continent's ills derive..from the way individual African governments treat their own people," sounds eerily like British Afrophobe, Richard Dowden, whose notorious 2000 Economist cover portrayed Africa as "The Hopeless Continent." Fabricius similarly condemns "corrupt deals with foreign corporations…in which African governments are often complicit," blaming the corrupted but not the corrupter.

 

His analysis reflects the widespread Eurocentrism that pervades parts of the South African media, as evidenced by analysts such as the Brenthurst Foundation's Greg Mills. It is almost as if such authors are harking back nostalgically to the dark days of apartheid, when South Africa was safely in the anti-Communist Western camp and a member of the "White Dominions."  Those days of the politics of "kith and kin," are, however, over. Even an "exceptional" South Africa will now have to forge a democratic African future, while adroitly engaging West and East in promoting its own national and regional interests.   

    

 Professor Adekeye Adebajo is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Pretoria's Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.

Business Day (South Africa), 27 February 2023.

 

On Sat, 25 Feb 2023 at 16:58, Adekeye Adebajo <adekeye.adebajo@up.ac.za> wrote:

 

Dear all. Hope all is well. Sorry for the very short notice, but pasted below and attached is the programme for a hybrid seminar this Monday 27 February 2023 from 1500-1900 South Africa time (8.00am-12.00pm US East Coast time) focusing on the outcomes of the recent US-Africa Leaders' Summit in Washington DC. 

The meeting is jointly organised by the University of Pretoria in South Africa and Howard University in the US, and the zoom link is below. Hope some of you can make it despite the short notice. 

Will send my fortnightly column in the next day or two. best, adekeye. 

 

ZOOM LINK: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/4941648029 

 

Programme

 

Policy Seminar to Review the 2022 US-Africa Leaders' Summit

Monday 27 February 2023

 15:00pm – 15:10pm Opening Remarks by Prof Christopher Isike,

University of Pretoria, RSA

15:10pm – 16:55pm

Chair: Prof Adekeye Adebajo

University of Pretoria, RSA

Panel Session I: Overview and

Outcomes of the 2014 and 2022

US-Africa Leaders' Summits

 

15:10pm – 15:30pm Panelist 1 Prof Krista Johnson

Howard University, USA

15:30 – 15:50pm Panelist 2 Prof Tawana Kupe

University of Pretoria, RSA

15:50pm – 16:10pm Panelist 3 Prof Christopher Isike

University of Pretoria, RSA

 

16:10pm – 16:55pm Q&A

 

16:55pm – 18:45pm

Chair: Prof Krista Johnson

Panel Session II: Key Issues of

the 2022 US-Africa Leaders'

Summit

16:55pm – 17:15pm Panelist 1 Prof Abdi Samatar

University of Minnesota, USA

 

17:15pm – 17:35pm Panelist 2 Prof Samar Mussa Al-Bulushi

University of California, Irvine, USA

17:35pm – 17:55pm Panelist 3 Prof Adekeye Adebajo

University of Pretoria, RSA

17:55pm – 18:40pm Q&A

18:40pm – 18:45pm Closing remarks. 

 

 

 

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