By Tibor Nagy
There was considerable national and global publicity given to the Africa Leaders’ Summit in Washington, D.C., hosted by President Obama. As someone who lived and worked in Africa for more than 20 years, I’m delighted this finally happened. Unfortunately, it should have been done differently. Here is some background on the event:
Why Africa? Africa is no more about Ebola and Boko Haram terrorists than the U.S. is about drive-by shootings in Chicago or the crises on the Mexican border.
It’s a huge continent, with a landmass which would easily contain the U.S., China and India, plus much of Europe. With 53 countries and 1 billion-plus people, Africa has immense natural resources. In the 21st century, conflicts are fewer, societies are freer and better-educated and its people are living longer with much greater access to health care and other basic human needs.
And a great majority of its people are under 30, with the energy, goals and ambitions shared by similarly aged Americans, Chinese or Brazilians. Africa also contained eight of the world’s fastest growing economies between 2000 and 2013, with a number of its countries quickly evolving to middle-income status.
Afro-optimism was clearly in evidence when I attended a U.S.-Ethiopia Investment summit in Houston recently, featuring an impressive high-powered Ethiopian delegation which included the country’s president and six senior ministers.
What impressed me even more was the keen interest from the U.S. side — Houston’s business community came out in full force, including a number of major energy companies, to discuss investment opportunities for U.S. firms.
All but a handful of African countries are either exploiting gas and oil or exploring possibilities. The Washington summit was similar, albeit on a much larger scale, with no doubt billions of dollars’ worth of new business deals announced, as African nations shop for airplanes, equipment, consumer goods and massive infrastructure projects.
Why now? While “better late than never” is a good maxim, this summit should have taken place years ago.
China has been courting Africa for well more than a decade and organizing such meetings every two years. The Europeans have similarly been engaged and more recently India has conducted its own summits to promote Indian companies to Africa’s leaders.
The results have been telling: China replaced the U.S. as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009, and last year China’s trade with Africa was more than $200 billion — while the U.S.’ share was a relatively paltry $85 billion. What makes this especially frustrating is during recent decades when U.S. assistance was helping Africa develop, China and others were more focused on developing trade and investment.
In a way, U.S. dollars helped “educate and medicate” Africans so they could then be hired by the Chinese. Interestingly, unlike the U.S. and Europe, China doesn’t even have an international assistance agency — although many observers believe China actually accomplishes more “development” through its trade and investment.
Another source of frustration — one I experienced firsthand while trying to help U.S.businesses in Africa — is Africans genuinely like Americans and prefer our products. But such demand is meaningless without a supply — and when the Chinese (and Indians, and Brazilians) are there while U.S. producers are not, guess who wins?
For whatever reason, aside from our global companies, especially those in the energy sector, American businesses have been reluctant to get into Africa while the image of that continent was one of war, famine and pestilence. Now a new reality has emerged, and the word is out Africa is an opportunity, not a problem.
U.S. companies are suddenly interested and “Africa is the New China” (as a number of articles pronounce). Hopefully, this interest will translate into real activity.Unfortunately, the U.S. government, unlike our chief competitors, is not very adept at helping our businesses in new or difficult environments.
While our large global companies don’t need such handholding, middle-sized and small businesses unfamiliar with Africa’s challenging business landscape do. And there is no “one stop shop” in Washington to help. Rather, there are six or seven different agencies, some of which – anyone ever hear of the U.S. Trade and Development Agency? – are rather obscure.
So will the summit accomplish anything? I certainly hope there are lasting results beyond a feel-good, Kumbaya experience, and the trade dealsannounced during the summit. The fact is the Obama administration has been disappointing to Africa. While President George W. Bush had his image problems with the U.S. electorate, he was popular in Africa for his personal commitment to combatting HIV/AIDS and the funding in support of his initiative.
Expectations among Africans for Obama – the first U.S. president with African roots -- were sky-high, and disappointment quickly followed as Obama spent only 24 hours on the continent during his first term and seemed disengaged from African issues.
And his administration didn’t even announce a formal Africa policy until June 2012 – just months from the U.S. election – which was nothing more than a list of desiderata and previous Africa policies restated with no implementation plan or additional resources. Unfortunately, even the Kumbaya comparison may be too optimistic.
The Washington conference plan is very un-African culturally. Obama is having no individual “face to face” meetings with African leaders, and there will be no final summit declaration – both highly important to the attendees to take home to their people.
Conversely, the Chinese leadership always finds time to give each African leader some individual time, perhaps better understanding the cultural necessity.
The future? As Africa becomes more prosperous, more democratic and more peaceful, its role will grow significantly as a US trading partner, and its role as a destination for US humanitarian assistance will decrease accordingly.
Unless we want this huge market to prefer China’s goods and China’s political system, we’ll need to engage much more than holding occasional summits which look good on TV but have limited long-term results.
TIBOR NAGY is vice provost for international affairs at Texas Tech and served as U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia from 1999 to 2002 and to Guinea from 1996 to 1999.
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