Africa Rising 21st Century

  The signs of the fragility of Sudan’s transition to democracy have been there for some time, even after President Omar al-Bashir was removed from office in 2019.   The military, which overthrew him following massive street demonstrations, reluctantly agreed to form a transitional government with civilian involvement, but military leaders were initially noncommittal about how long the transition would last and how the new government would be structured.   Many observers didn’t believe this “shotgun marriage” would last, and they were right. Early this week, Sudan’s military arrested Prime Minister Addallah Hamdok and other civilian leaders in a coup that likely ends any residual faith that Sudan’s military would willingly allow full civilian rule. Progress toward political reform in Sudan already was moving at a snail’s pace before the coup. Gen. Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan, who was in the inner circle of the former dictator, dissolved the Sudan government and decl...

           In the United States today, there is much discussion about supply chain problems threatening a delay in receiving goods from China into California ports that could impact Christmas sales.   Even more seriously, good on the dozens of vessels at sea waiting to unload at Los Angeles and other ports are also items of more immediate needs, such as medical equipment.   Because we have allowed the shift of goods to production in China – from toys to aspirin – the West Coast supply chain blockage is broadly important to customers across America.             However, I must ask: what about Africa’s supply chain issues?   Both the federal government and the U.S. private sector have long expressed interest in boosting U.S.-Africa trade.   So, what is being done to address the challenges that make Africa imports more difficult to receive and more costly than they ne...

 Much is made of human rights failures in Africa, and rightly so.   The denial of rights to citizens is always a sign of a despotic government that considers them subjects who owe unquestioning allegiance to its rulers.   Such governments waste the human resources present in their countries and provoke mass migrations, e.g., Eritrea, recently the fastest-emptying countries in the world until South Sudan’s conflict led to an exodus. But human rights failures are the result of the failure of good governance.   This has not been the top priority of U.S. government policy, which focuses on current national security needs.   While such preoccupations have some justification in fulfilling the mission of protecting the homeland, these short-sighted policies only create problems down the road – both for the indigenous people of the countries in question and for the United States and the West by creating political monsters such as Mobutu Sese Seko in the former Zaire b...

  China’s influence in Africa has grown by leaps and bounds.   In recent years, African central bank officials increasingly have even been discussing using the Chinese yuan as part of African foreign reserves, which would elevate the Chinese currency to one of the world’s major reserve currencies. In fact, many African nations have signed up to join China’s internationally-funded bank, which offers loans to emerging economies with fewer requirements than other international banks. However, a current study by AidData, a U.S.-based research organization, finds that China’s massive “Belt and Road” global infrastructure funding strategy is based on a “secretive overseas development finance program” that has saddled dozens of developing countries with nearly $400 billion worth of “hidden debt.”   The study says Belt and Road is based on loans that often feature heavily conditioned liabilities that go undisclosed to borrowing nations in Africa, Southeast Asia and other corner...