On Monday, June 19, 2023, Toyin Falola <toyinfalola@austin.utexas.edu> wrote:
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ADEKEYE ADEBAJO: Uncle Sam's 'dialogue of the deaf' with Africa
19 JUNE 2023
US secretary of state Antony Blinken. Picture: ZHANG XIAOYU/REUTERS
US ties with SA were recently shaken by the explosive but unproven allegation by the US ambassador to SA, Reuben Brigety, that Pretoria had shipped arms to Russia.
Nine months ago, US secretary of state Antony Blinken unveiled a new "strategy towards Sub-Saharan Africa", for which some African analysts have acted as cheerleaders. The new strategy promises to "reset" relations with Africa through fostering open societies; delivering democratic and security dividends; advancing pandemic recovery and economic opportunity; and supporting the climate agenda.
But this strategy is deeply flawed. First, the US cuts Africa off at its head, and then contradicts itself in wanting to work closely with the AU and African Continental Free Trade area, which both have North African members. Second, even as Washington undermines African interests at the World Trade Organisation, World Bank and IMF, its strategy perversely calls for African agency.
Third, with no sense of irony the US touts its "long and proud history with African countries", as if the sordid four century transatlantic slave trade, which greatly facilitated America's industrialisation at the cost of 450,000 enslaved Africans, never happened. More recently, former US president Donald Trump described Africa as a "shithole".
China
The new strategy explicitly warns Africans about China's "malign" activities in Africa. However, from 2016-2020 Washington was the largest arms exporter to the continent, accounting for 37% of sales compared to Beijing's 5%. China's $4-trillion Belt & Road initiative has built roads, bridges and railways across Africa, while the American-led Group of Seven Partnership for Global Infrastructure & Investment remains on paper.
China is Africa's largest trading partner at $254bn, and accounts for 20% of the continent's industrial output. Even as Africans are warned to beware the Chinese dragon, Beijing is the largest exporter to the US and Washington's second largest creditor.
The US self-righteously claims to be pursuing "values-driven and transparent investments", while accusing China of using Africa to "challenge the rules-based international order [and] advance its own narrow commercial and geopolitical interests". While Beijing does sometimes pursue one-sided interests and has a military base in Djibouti, Washington is reported to have a military presence in over a dozen African countries.
Was it also not illegal US military interventions in Grenada, Panama and Iraq that have damaged the rules-based international order? Has Washington not historically backed autocratic regimes in Liberia, Somalia and Zaire, and today in Chad and Egypt?
Though Uncle Sam has been generous in rendering humanitarian assistance to Africa, poorly funded aid programmes like Prosper Africa have left Africa poor, Power Africa has left the continent in the dark, while Feed the Future is not even feeding the present. Washington has subsidised its farmers at $20bn a year over the last decade. Why preach free trade while practising unfair trade?
Much has been made of the renewal, in 2025, of the US Africa Growth & Opportunity Act (Agoa) which allows duty-free access to the US market for over 1,800 African products. However, none of the 36 eligible African countries has been able to take full advantage of these opportunities, largely due to a lack of capacity. Much of Agoa's exports have also consisted of oil, with only 1.3% of total US imports in 2021 coming from Africa.
On climate change, the US and its allies have yet to fulfil their annual $100bn pledge to the global South. Instead of concrete funding, US policy towards Africa has often degenerated into periodic "photo ops" like last December's US-Africa summit: an optical illusion many Africans appear slow to understand, blinded as they are by the trappings of US power even as its global dominance declines.
Uncle Sam needs to switch on his hearing aid, and listen to the voices of Africans.
• Adebajo is professor and senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria's Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship.
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Listserv moderated by Toyin Falola, University of Texas at Austin
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