U.S. Leadership Inconsistency on Africa Policy

 The Biden Administration is about to release its Africa policy within days of this writing. Most U.S. Administrations do this at some point, but it usually turns out to be a rehash of what is already being done. There are few new initiatives and usually scant personal involvement by U.S. presidents on Africa issues.

Two advisory firms – Africa Practice in conjunction with Mercury LLC – got a jump on the anticipated presentation by Secretary of State Antony Blinken. They made several recommendations, but I want to focus on one point they made that has not gotten sufficient attention over the years.

“The U.S-Africa relationship depends too heavily on who occupies the White House, in a way that U.S-EU and U.S-Asia relations do not. The value at stake for US policymakers is seen predominantly through the lens of competition with China and national security, rather than an exercise in improving investment flows or trade relations,” their report stated. “African policymakers should more clearly set out their ambitions for the relationship and seek to define it from a focus on self, rather than as an exercise in appeasement. And rather than view Africa purely through a national security lens, U.S policy makers should seek to better understand the opportunities afforded African nations, which American organisations can help to realise for mutual benefit.”

I want to focus on the issue of presidential leadership on Africa. Africa has rarely been at the forefront of U.S. policy calculations. Back in the days of President John F. Kennedy, the continent was largely considered as the province of the European colonial powers and apartheid South Africa. Nevertheless, Kennedy invited more than two dozen African leaders to the White House and made clear his support for Africa nationalism. He considered the crisis in the Congo (later to be called Zaire) to be of importance to his administration and backed a United Nations resolution opposing the secession of Katanga Province. In the 1950s, his speeches attacked French colonialism in Vietnam and Algeria, also extending as well to the struggles for independence in sub-Saharan Africa. In 1958, the State Department first established a Bureau of African Affairs, and the following year, Kennedy became chairman of the African Affairs Subcommittee of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Unfortunately, his interest in Africa did not, however, prevent his administration’s opposition to Congo’s Patrice Lumumba and South Africa’s Nelson Mandela during the height of the Cold War with the Soviet Union as they were seen as allies to America’s main geopolitical rival. It remains unclear to what extent the U.S. government provided intelligence against Mandela to the South African government, but the South African leader remained on the terrorist watch list until 2008.

Speaking at a reception marking the third anniversary of the organization of African Unity at the White House on May 26, 1966, President Lyndon Johnson sounded like a strong proponent of African liberation.

“You have built new institutions to express a new sense of unity. Even as you grapple with the problems of early nationhood, you have sought out new possibilities of joint action – the OAU itself, the Economic Commission for Africa, the African Development Bank, and sub-regional groupings such as the Economic Community of Eastern Africa,” Johnson said. “Growth in Africa must then follow the inspiration of African peoples. It must stem from the leadership of African governments. Assistance from others can provide the extra resources to help speed this growth. Such assistance is already underway. In the last 5 years, aid from all external sources has amounted to over $8 billion. The United States of America has extended approximately $2 billion of that $8 billion.”

During his time in office, nine African countries gained their independence – from Kenya to Equatorial Guinea. Ten African nations had become independent during Kennedy’s shortened term in office. In both cases, U.S. support largely was motivated by the aim of blocking the Soviet Union from gaining client states in Africa.

In an April 17, 1969, meeting with Secretary of State William Rogers, Kenyan Ambassador Burudi Nabwera urged the U.S. government to formulate and follow an independent policy toward Africa instead of always following the lead of other major Western powers such as the United Kingdom and France. He said the practice of following others occurred during the previous U.S. administration and appeared to be continuing. Rogers denied that this was the administration of President Richard Nixon was doing, but his denial was contradicted by the realpolitik of National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, who sought to avoid damaging the Portuguese government during the problematic independence efforts in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea Bissau. Anti-Communism was the motivation for the deteriorating U.S. relations with Ethiopia following the coup against Emperor Haile Selassie, as the incoming Derg government declared itself to follow a Marxist-Leninist policy. It should be noted that even before he became President, Nixon set the stage for a sea-change in U.S. trade policy toward Africa. After an eight-country trip to the continent in 1957, Vice President Nixon recommended to President Dwight Eisenhower that “the United States Government through its agencies should, as appropriate, draw the attention of private American capital for investment to opportunities in those areas where the conditions for such investment are propitious.”  It took considerable time for this view to take hold, but it became fully developed in a later administration.

In 1976, then-Secretary of State Kissinger conducted a series of intricate, multiparty negotiations in southern Africa to persuade white Rhodesian leader Ian Smith to accept Black majority rule. Conducted near the end of President Gerald Ford’s term in office, against substantial U.S. domestic opposition, Kissinger’s efforts culminated in Smith’s public announcement that he would accept majority rule within two years. This set the stage for the later Lancaster House negotiations which resulted in the actual transition to Black majority rule. Again, however, this was an effort to prevent Soviet influence in southern Africa. Kissinger was a considerable influence in two administrations, foreshadowing the influence later advisors would have on presidential policies on Africa in later years.

President Jimmy Carter’s administration faced major tests in Rhodesia and the Horn of Africa. Cold War competition was still a major factor in Africa policy, complicated by Carter’s strong views on human rights. Relations with Uganda also suffered during Idi Amin’s reign (although for some reason, the even greater human rights abuses under two terms of Milton Obote have never been given much U.S. government attention). It was during the waning days of the Ford administration and the Carter administration that the Congressional Black Caucus began to wield increasing influence through Congress on U.S. foreign policy, which also influences U.S. domestic opinion on African issues.

President Ronald Reagan’s major Africa issue was the so-called “constructive engagement” policy with apartheid South Africa. In a 1981 interview with CBS television newsman Walter Cronkite, the issue of apartheid was raised in the context of a discussion about human rights and the spread of Communism. Reagan characterized the situation in South Africa as one of slow, but deliberate progress. His view was considered callous regarding the oppressed Black majority in South Africa. Reagan considered South Africa to be a “friendly country” and a good ally in the international battle against Communism, which he made significant headway in fighting, resulting in the end of the Soviet Union, which should have meant that Cold War politics no longer heavily influenced U.S. policy toward Africa.

In addition to attempting to bring peace to Angola, Mozambique and Ethiopia, President George H. W. Bush’s administration focused on democracy building and humanitarian issues. It was Bush who sent 28,000 Marines to Somalia that began what became a disastrous U.S. military intervention in that country. His administration faced a unique situation. Coming just after the fall of the Soviet Union and before the rise of China fully, he could focus on fighting global terrorism, including in Africa – a struggle that continues to this day. Bush did seize on the opening South Africa President F.W. De Klerk signaled about facilitating the move to majority rule and ending apartheid in his country. The subsequent 1994 elections in South Africa brought Nelson Mandela to power and instituted a Truth and Reconciliation process whose success has yet to be matched anywhere in the world. His two greatest legacies came late in his term in office. The Africa Regional Electoral Assistance Fund was created in the early 1990s to respond to the wave of democratization in Africa by providing funding for voter education, political party training and election support throughout sub-Saharan Africa. Assistance provided through the coalition of non-governmental organizations that implemented programming under the fund, facilitated an explosion of democratic elections in Africa, empowering African citizens to finally express their will at the ballot box. The other was National Security Memo 30, which outlined a far-reaching policy plan toward Africa, but which was unrealized during his administration because of the late date of its release.

President Bill Clinton had the 1993 Battle for Mogadishu early in his term that subsequently resulted in the 1994 debacle known as “Black Hawk Down” in Somalia as a U.S. helicopter was shot down, and American forces were under siege by Somali militants as part of U.N. intervention in that country recommended by his advisers. His administration also suffered through the disastrous response to the failed UN intervention in Rwanda during the 1994 genocide there. Those were dilemmas proceeding from the Bush years. Yet Clinton also inherited from Bush the policy of expanded engagement with Africa, which his administration began to implement. Virtually his entire cabinet visited Africa with an eye toward some level of policy engagement with the continent. While it was Congress that devised the African Growth and Opportunity Act, Clinton and his administration (most officials anyway) embraced it. Clinton gave Africa a prominence in his State of the Union addresses that had never been done by previous presidents. It was during his administration that staff wielded considerable influence on Africa policy that still plays out today even without a heavyweight such as Kissinger.

Many observers say that President George W. Bush’s greatest legacy is what he did for Africa. Not only did he embrace AGOA, but his administration created programs such as the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the President’s Malaria Initiative (PMI) and the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC), the latter of which provided some of the largest U.S. grants to African countries. In fact, it is widely said that Bush is the most popular U.S. President in Africa, largely because of the more than 23 million lives saved through PEPFAR alone. Africans continued to praise him during a post-presidential visit to Africa in 2011. MCC has been a meaningful change in Africa as well, creating a dynamic of collaboration in recipient countries of government, the private sector and civil society. Bush seemed to have a heart for Africa, meeting with 25 African leaders during his first two years in office and making the first trip to Africa by an American president in his first term. He was the first U.S. president to direct his cabinet to have high-level engagement with Africa. Bush also asked for and received significant increases in U.S. government funding for health and security programming in Africa.

            When President Barak Obama was elected, Kenyans declared a national holiday in honor of a U.S. leader who had Kenyan heritage. However, on election night, I was with a delegation of Nigerians explaining our election process. I told them then not to expect too much in terms of major new Africa policy initiatives because Obama’s African heritage could be considered as an impediment to having broader foreign policy influence if he seemed to be prioritizing Africa. Moreover, advisors in his administration and in Congress initially seemed to want to jettison or alter what they saw as Republican initiatives in Africa. For example, his administration wanted to turn over management of PEPFAR to African governments, including funding. However, it quickly became clear that such a tactic would not be feasible in the short term, and the initiatives created by the previous regime were continued. Obama’s Trade Africa program was the kind of interagency effort that would later result in a more successful plan to build U.S-Africa trade. A more impactful interagency effort was Power Africa, created during this administration to resolve the serious lack of access to electricity on the continent.

            Not much was expected on Africa policy from President Donald Trump, and he operated through a mixed bag of advisors. Those who recommended the broad global Muslim visa ban operated on ideological terms absent a genuine understanding of what was legally possible. Meanwhile, other advisors continued robust implementation of AGOA and the full range of U.S. programs benefitting Africa, despite the efforts of others to cut significantly into the budget of the government’s main aid vehicle, the U.S. Agency for International Development. This behind-the-scenes clash created a see-saw impact on Africa policy. An initial program known as Clear Choice initially was proposed as an effort to push African governments to select America and reject China as a main partner. Trump advisors with more Africa experience got that changed to encouraging more U.S.-Africa partnerships because of less constraining assistance and more reliable products and services. But the most significant Africa program was the Prosper Africa initiative, which learned lessons from the failures of Trade Africa and created a new dynamic for mutually beneficial trade and investment between the United States and Africa that has continued beyond his term in office.

            President Joe Biden came into office with the reputation of having significant foreign policy experience and has the most African-born staff in various positions of any U.S. administration. Neither has helped in his administration’s efforts in East Africa, though. We are now on the third Special Envoy for the Horn of Africa in less than two years without significant visible progress in resolving the long-running Ethiopian civil war that threatens regional stability even after the conflict is ended. Because of the perceived bias of Biden advisors on Ethiopia, it has been difficult for the United States to be accepted as an honest broker in Ethiopian peace talks. Nevertheless, efforts behind the scenes continue. This administration has, however, done more than its predecessors in at least trying to rein in the malign influence of Eritrea in the region. The Biden administration is operating during a period in which Chinese influence in Africa is in full bloom, complicating efforts to retain and expand American influence on the continent. Now Russia is flexing its muscles on the continent through arms sales and its supply of grain and fertilizer, adding a further complication for U.S. policy.

            Over the years, few American presidents – John Kennedy and George W. Bush as exceptions – were enthusiastically pursuing an active U.S. policy on Africa. This government’s policies largely were either the result of contesting the Cold War with the Soviet Union and now Russia or competition with China. The global fight against terrorism also has had a major influence on U.S. policy toward Africa for very valid reasons. It is true that various presidents approach Africa policy in significantly diverse ways, but it also is true that advisors move in out front positions like Kissinger or behind the scenes like Susan Rice and Gayle Smith to shape how the government addresses its interests in Africa. Whatever U.S. policy is presented, its implementation will depend on which external or internal influences control policies and what events arise must be addressed at the time.