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Politics
Home›African Arguments›Politics›US-Africa summit showcases continent’s expanding economies – By Hannah Waddilove

US-Africa summit showcases continent’s expanding economies – By Hannah Waddilove

By Uncategorised
August 7, 2014
2046
0

hwaddiloveThis week’s US-Africa Summit was an unprecedented event. Forty-five African leaders gladly attended, and as other analysis wryly pointed out, unlike the recent EU-Africa Summit, the decision not to invite President Robert Mugabe did not spark any boycott threats. African countries’ so-called “˜Look East’ policies diversify rather than displace “˜traditional’ partners — and no one is going to ignore a partner like the United States.

The summit’s main purpose was to shift the narrative of engagement in sub-Saharan Africa, giving a fresh coat of paint to relationships with the continent’s most pre-eminent diplomatic, security and development player. The three-day event showcased the role that the private sector can play in economic growth, essentially promoting the idea that US models of partnership might better serve its long-term interests.

In this, it appeared to emulate high-level summits that have long been undertaken by the continent’s “˜new’ partners (China, Japan, Turkey and so on). It was no doubt an indicator of the continent’s expanding economies, which potentially afford greater opportunities for US firms in a still low yield global economy.

Of course, it remains to be seen whether this confab of public diplomacy and business interest will become a periodic way to “˜institutionalise’ relations between the United States and African countries. Funding commitments from US government bodies that promote US foreign investment (e.g. the Ex-Im Bank, which has doubled its Africa financing this year) are already embroiled in Congressional bi-partisan politicking.

The “˜catch-up’ narrative that permeates Washington still appears misplaced. This is primarily because it tends to assume that sub-Saharan Africa should be more important to the United States than strategic priorities elsewhere indicate (the Asia “˜pivot’, Middle East instability etc.).

Moreover, while high-level political support and funding from US government bodies may help reduce risks involved in African investments, these initiatives will not displace US firms’ independent approaches and risk appetites. The United States does not exemplify a state-led commercial strategy.

The economic and investment focus of the summit did not indicate any shift in US strategic interests, which remain concerned with the mitigation of perceived security threats. President Barack Obama’s trip to the continent last year was ostensibly designed to strengthen economies ties, but also to further broader foreign policy objectives.

In Africa, these promote the expansion in the capacity of US military operations across the continent — even though the conventional “˜footprint’ might look small with only one permanent base in Djibouti, the “˜places’ not “˜bases’ approach is the cornerstone of US power projection. Increasingly, these blur with traditional development and diplomacy roles.

So while there is little chance that economic relations will reframe US-Africa ties, the summit was an indicator of the continent’s expanding economies, and an attempt by the White House and the State Department to present the United States as a partner seeking to advance mutually beneficial goals. Time will tell on its “˜positive spin’ attention span.

Hannah Waddilove is Africa Analyst at Oxford Analytica.

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0 comments

  1. Monte McMurchy 8 August, 2014 at 12:59

    This week saw 50+ African Leaders attend Washington DC to participate and engage in an economic civic social dialectal conversation under the aegis of President Obama.
    What I find compelling in this American and African Leaders Summit is that any descriptive or prescriptive approach to ‘development’ will either respect the rights of both the poor and the civic social disenfranchised; or ‘development’ will violate these fundamental essential civic social rights of both the poor and disenfranchised. Therefore in ‘development’ there can exist no avoidance to this moral ethical dilemma entailed in development praxis in an appeal to normative non ideological non biased groundings!

  2. Jens-Peter Kamanga Dyrbak 21 August, 2014 at 21:44

    Good post Hannah
    In a way your last sentence says it all.
    The Summit and the focus was right – as were Obama’s main messages on power, productivity and governance.

    Above all, the argument that solutions are mainly in the hands of African leaders is right. But, as you hint, it is not yet clear what has actually changed beyond the mutual interest in doing business.

    Overall, a number of African countries are a cross-roads. Was the last 2 decades of growth just due to an unusual set factors including improved governance and opening up of key sectors – Paul Collier’s “first wave of reform”, technology, high natural resource prices and debt relief? Can new middle income countries such as Ghana, Zambia and Kenya (Nigeria is more complicated) genuinely start breaking away from neo-patrimonial politics? And, how – and to what extent – can the international community help that process?

    Readers interested in those questions may also be interested in the blog http://www.africatrendsmatter.wordpress.com

  3. Ineke Buskens 23 August, 2014 at 07:59

    “From 2008 to 2013, the number of missions, exercises, operations, and other activities under AFRICOM’s purview has skyrocketed from 172 to 546, but little substantive information has been made public about what exactly most of these missions involved and just who U.S. forces have trained. Since 2011, U.S. Army Africa alone has taken part in close to 1,000 “activities” across the continent, but independent reporters have only been on hand for a tiny fraction of them, so there are limits to what we can know about them beyond military talking points and official news releases for a relative few of these missions. Only later did it become clear that the United States extensively mentored the military officer who overthrew Mali’s elected government in 2012, and that the U.S. trained a Congolese commando battalion implicated by the United Nations in mass rapes and other atrocities during that same year, to cite two examples.

    Since its inception, U.S. Africa Command has consistently downplayed its roleon the continent. Meanwhile, far from the press or the public, the officers running its secret operations have privately been calling Africa “the battlefield of tomorrow, today.”

    Revealed: The U.S. military’s next shadow war – Salon.com
    http://www.salon.com/2014/03/28/revealed_the_u_s_militarys_next_shadow_war_partner/

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