President George W. Bush is not entirely welcome in Africa, where he is on a five-nation trip taking him from Senegal to South Africa, Botswana, Uganda and Nigeria. No less a person than Nelson Mandela was highly critical of the invasion of Iraq and described Bush as a man “who could not think properly”. Yet Africans, with their raft of pressing problems from famine to AIDS to economic backwardness, may be calculating that they cannot afford to alienate the Americans.
In the short term, this is probably correct; but they should not delude themselves that all George W. Bush wants to achieve from his visit is to boost the black vote for his re-election campaign. Within the presidential retinue are US officials anxious to advance the White House’s campaign against international terrorism. They will be seeking every cooperation in this fight from their hosts. On the face of it, no bad thing. But already, there are signs that the Americans are uninterested in respecting local due process. Last month, five people suspected of being Al-Qaeda members were spirited away from Malawi and have not been heard of since. Then there is the scourge of AIDS. Bush has earmarked the greater part of a $15 billion budget to treat the disease in Africa, where 70 percent of AIDS victims are struggling to survive. Not all that money may materialize, but it would be a callous government that turned away such help. Yet as with the US insistence that famine-stricken countries accept genetically modified food aid, so we can suspect that there will be strings attached to the assistance with AIDS.
It must also be seen that there is are similar catches to the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) — legislation which gives African products duty-free access to American markets. Only by trade growth can the malfunctioning economies of Africa reverse years of decline. Yet African governments would do well to look at the way that US big business came to dominate the countries of Central America which had only one or two main exports. The commercial control of these places, and with it political influence, quickly passed into US hands.
And finally of course there is oil. Washington wants to cut its dependence on Middle East supplies. The huge reserves discovered off the coast of West Africa in the Gulf of Guinea, already account for 15 percent of US imports. That could rise to fully a quarter of US imports within a decade.
Africa therefore matters more to the Americans than Africa may suspect. Wise governments will use this fact to drive deals with Washington which do not allow the tentacles of US economic power to recolonize their countries. It will not by any means be easy. But it is surely crucial that this new era of closer relations between Africa and the US starts off on the right foot.