U.S. Summit Competition Disadvantage

            For two decades, the United States has held a trio of conferences that used to be considered summits: the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) Ministerial, Private Sector Forum and Civil Society Forum. They have comprised the American part of the international competition to win the hearts and minds of Africans. The US-Africa Leaders’ Summit and the US-Africa Business Summit (December 13-15, 2022) are being touted as stand-ins for the AGOA forums, but, while some positive developments are possible, that really isn’t the case.

            AGOA is a longstanding trade process that has defined American commercial interactions with African countries since the turn of this century. The three forums are intended to get all three sectors – government, private sector and civil society – in line on how the United States and qualifying African beneficiary countries do business. Unfortunately, so much turnover in African countries and incomplete dissemination of AGOA trade information by the United States have produced forums in which we seem to be starting over each year with new African participants who aren’t familiar with the AGOA process or Americans officials unsure of how viable AGOA is. So, even though AGOA has significant potential and has been effective, the annual forums never seem to make enduring progress.

            The Chinese hold their Forum on China-Africa Cooperation every three years, and Japan also holds its Tokyo International Conference on African Development every three years. In both cases, almost all African countries participate, and Chinese and African leaders at the highest levels take part in these summits. Since AGOA was signed into law in 2000, American Presidents have rarely participated in person or when they do, it usually is mostly ceremonial. That is why African leaders don’t attend AGOA Ministerials. You might think it’s because it is directed toward minister level officials, but it started with African heads of state until they realized they wouldn’t be interacting with the American President himself.

            However, that’s not the only reason the United States is at a competitive disadvantage in terms of African summits. Unlike China particularly, the United States levies sanctions on governments that violate international human rights standards writ large. Despite the ability to use tools such as the Global Magnitsky Act, which allows for individual sanctions on government officials and their allies who violate international law rather than general sanctions. For example, the United States suspended Ethiopia’s AGOA eligibility because of its part in the Tigray conflict, but the people who were most involved in directing war operations or violating human rights were not the Ethiopian businesspeople who suffer by having their AGOA benefits curtailed.

            Zimbabwe has been excluded from AGOA since the beginning of the trade process, although it continues to benefit from the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP) benefits. Ironically, the qualifications for AGOA were largely adopted from GSP, and AGOA benefits are considered an extension of GSP. Zimbabwe has been invited to the US-Africa Leaders’ Summit, but under a series of sanctions that began in 2001 with the Zimbabwe Democracy and Economic Recovery Act, President Emerson Mnangagwa is technically not allowed to visit the United States except for the United Nations, and even then, his movements in this country are restricted. Of course, President Biden could waive the sanctions limitations on Mnangagwa’s visit temporarily at least.

This highlights the main problem with sanctions on African countries. If the U.S. government wants to compete with other nations in demonstrating our interest in working with Africans, we must allow a robust dialogue. Sanctions are not placed on a nation casually, but should that end dialogue or begin a new phase of discussions aimed at co-identifying problems and working together to resolve them? Dictators such as Isaias Afwerki of Eritrea will not bend in his determination to achieve his aims, and no amount of dialogue will likely move him. Still, the situation will remain locked in place without at least some efforts to discuss what we object to his government’s behavior. Sanctions result when dialogue fails, but sanctions cannot be the end of things.

Mali, Burkina Faso, Sudan and Guinea are the only African countries specifically not invited to the summit. The rationale was that they all were sanctioned by the African Union. True though that may be, these nations are not barred from AU summits, nor is the AU opposed to ongoing dialogue with them to resolve issues as possible.

Through the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), this government places sanctions on countries seen as violating the religious freedom of their citizens – countries of particular concern. Currently, Eritrea is sanctioned under this designation; Nigeria was removed from that list despite abundant evidence that nothing had changed to justify their removal from this designation and a request for redesignation by USCIRF. Algeria, Central African Republic and Comoros are on the watchlist, meaning they have done little to guarantee religious freedom but have not violated international law sufficiently to be cited as countries of particular concern. USCIRF recommended Egypt be on this list but the State Department declined to do so. Designated countries are subject to visa bans for selected individuals and financial sanctions for governments and individuals, including asset freezes.

As mentioned before, some countries are subject to suspensions from the AGOA trade process. In addition to Ethiopia and Zimbabwe, the current list of countries suspended from AGOA are: Burundi, Cameroon, Eritrea, Guinea, Mali, Mauritania, South Sudan and Sudan. Ostensibly, suspensions or exclusions from AGOA are meant to punish governments that violate human rights standards, but they also hurt those countries’ private sectors, denying them quota-free, duty-free treatment for their goods, and sanctions cost jobs – sometimes counted in the thousands of jobs lost or not created in the first place.

So, unlike China, Japan or even Russia, which conduct periodic meetings with African countries, as well as the British Commonwealth or La Francophonie groupings of former British or French colonies, The U.S. government excludes human rights violators even as it admits some countries that are otherwise being sanctioned by government designation, including individual and corporate sanctions. Last year, when the U.S. government excluded Cuba and Venezuela from its Western Hemisphere summit, their exclusion became the main topic of discussion. While the African summit exclusions may not be a hot topic to the same degree, surely none of the leaders of sanctioned governments will fail to appeal to be removed from sanctions lists, as this limits their interaction with the U.S. government and denies foreign aid to some extent but also can interfere with the participation of governments and corporate entities in the global economy.

Granted, sanctions designations are not decisions made lightly, and those governments so designated have taken actions or failed to take actions that involve international laws and the human rights of their citizens. In many cases, governments so designated are self-destructive in their actions and are not amenable to enacting reforms even when agreeing to do so. This makes dialogue on such matters unlikely to be successful.

However, excluding them allows offending governments to claim that their economic problems are because the United States has instituted sanctions that have destroyed their economies and limited the freedom of movement of their officials. Such designations, when used as political and economic shields, allows for government to distract from their own bad policies.

Having offending government attend meetings would not necessarily imply that the U.S. government approves of their governance or plans to provide assistance inconsistent with sanctions procedures, but even if President Biden decided to allow all African governments to attend summits, his action would be excoriated by human rights advocates, who would criticize him for entertaining ruthless dictators. Meanwhile, the UN and AU sees value in allowing nations to participate in meetings despite their behavior on the basis that all nations deserve to make their case as part of the world community.

Earlier this year, Russia, still a member of the UN Security Council despite its widely sanctioned invasion of Ukraine, participated in all forums as usual, even voting on actions aimed at its own punishment. By allowing Russia to participate, the world community was able to debate the matter will all sides represented and make decisions without keeping the designated offender out of the room. The Russians were told to their face how much the world disapproved of their actions, and their defense was widely rejected publicly.

Allowing African human rights violators to come to the United States with their peers to engage in discussions would seem counterproductive, and the presence of sanctioned nations likely will lead to criticism of U.S. sanctions policies and appeals to remove such designations. But it also could offer an opportunity for other African nations to join in their public condemnation to their face about their behavior. Then it would be made clear that the United States is not some bully nation seeking to cripple African governments it doesn’t like.

That won’t happen at this summit, but what if it did? Could that be more beneficial than leaving offenders out, enabling them to blame the United States for the trouble they caused themselves? One can only imagine how that would work if allowed.