The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa

Ian Taylor

• Publisher: Continuum
• Year: 2010
• ISBN:
  9781441116529
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

This title examines Sub-Saharan Africa's relations with states such as the US, India, China, the EU, and Britain as well as with non-state actors. "The International Relations of Sub-Saharan Africa" is an in-depth examination Africa's place in global politics. The book provides a comprehensive and critical appraisal of the ways in which peace, prosperity, and democracy are being advanced (or restricted) by the activities of the great powers in Africa, including non-state actors, as well as who benefits from these policies and who does not. The book is a needed comparative study of the role of great powers and 'new' actors such as China and India in Africa within the wider context of neo-liberal hegemony. It fills a gap in the literature and will be of interest to any student of the continent. Its focus on external actors contributes to providing a fuller picture of Africa's place in the global political economy and how the continent interacts with the rest of the world. This is an essential work for anyone researching issues in international relations, comparative foreign policies, and African politics.

Chapter One

The Times They Are(n’t) A-changing: American Policies in Africa

Over the past ten years or so, American policies toward Africa have been grounded on two main goals: to advance global economic integration under conditions of neoliberalism and to counter perceived threats to American security interests. In 1997, the then assistant secretary of state for African Affairs Susan Rice spelt out this twin-track approach by asserting that the United States had “two clear policy goals: a) integrating Africa into the global economy through promotion of democracy, economic growth and development, and conflict resolution; and b) combating transnational security threats, including terrorism, crime, narcotics, weapons proliferation, environmental degradation, and disease” (Rice, 2000).

Even with the securitization of all conceivable government policies under the George W. Bush administration, and in the context of a post-9/11 world, Washington’s approach toward Africa was altered but somewhat. Obviously, 9/11 considerably impacted upon American foreign policy and international society in general, but it is noteworthy that in general US-African relations were only affected modestly. For Africans, a renewed focus on their continent post-9/11 by Washington meant in fact a continuation of well-established policies that predated the Bush government’s tenure (Copson, 2007).

It is in policy domains deemed to be particularly apposite to American national security national interests where Africa has enjoyed a resurgence of attention from Washington (Hentz, 2004). This has been interpreted by some as being novel: as one commentator asserted, post-9/11 “Africa has assumed a new, strategic place in US foreign policy and in the definition of vital US national interests” (Africa Policy Advisory Panel, 2004: 2). This has been linked to two interlinked factors: oil and potential terrorist threats. With regard to counterterrorism, military training and policing, American interests and involvement have multiplied post-9/11, with Washington’s Africa Command (AFRICOM) being but one example of this redefinition of the strategic place Africa occupies in American policy-making calculations. Yet, referring back to Susan Rice’s comments in 1997, it is apparent that Washington’s assessments of the main challenges to American-defined interests that Africa presents has remained largely unchanged.

In seeking to demonstrate some of the continuities in US-African ties, four key issues in American policies toward Africa will be examined: security and counterterrorism, energy, HIV/AIDS, and “good governance.” Demonstrating how policy calculations post-9/11 contextualized the strategic importance attached to Africa by the United States provides the running thread between the different sections of the chapter.

From Clinton to George W. Bush

The Africa Policy Advisory Panel (a Congressionally mandated body) released policy recommendations in 2004 on ways in which American policies toward Africa could be reinforced. According to the Panel, “President Bush, expanding on the precedent set by President Clinton, [has] consciously chose[n] to make Africa a higher priority and to mainstream it in US foreign policy” (Africa Policy Advisory Panel, 2004: 3). The report noted how an increase in terrorist attacks against American interests in Africa had been obvious throughout the 1990s, climaxing in the simultaneous bombings of American embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam in 1998.

Yet the Panel noted that it was only after 9/11 that policymakers “appreciate[d] fully” how the African continent fitted into American national interests in five crucial areas: HIV/AIDS, energy (primarily oil), terror, armed conflicts and developmental assistance (ibid.: 2). What is important to note here is that Washington had recognized the dangers associated with issues before 9/11, but it was the terrorist attacks on that day that stimulated not only an increased awareness and engagement by the United States with Africa, but also engendered a securitization of these perceived threats at every level of policy formulation.

The shock caused by 9/11 certainly acted as a stimulus to a renewal of American (and global) attention toward the continent, but it is important to remember the continuities. American foreign policies in Africa have continued to be generally consistent, certainly since the demise of the Soviet Union and the ending of the Cold War. As is well known, during the Cold War, Africa played host to a variety of proxy wars and could be characterized during that period as a chessboard for Superpower machinations. During this period, the maintenance of alliances with those elites deemed to be (or posturing themselves as) anti-communist trumped other policy considerations, such as the spreading of liberal democratic values, something that is claimed to be a central tenet of American foreign policy. The issue of human rights similarly went out the window when it came to combating Soviet influence on the continent. A somewhat stark realpolitik governed American engagement with Africa throughout the 1970s and 1980s.

However, at least initially, the end of the Cold War saw a relative reduction of American interest in Africa as the continent was deemed to have lost much of its strategic value, according to the policymakers’ calculations. As one analyst put it, “when the Cold War ended, America’s strategic interest in Africa ended” (Jack Spencer, a Heritage Foundation analyst, quoted in Kraxberger, 2005: 53). Disengagement was reflected by the fact that of the 21 American missions for foreign aid that were to be closed down in 1999, nine were in Africa (Martin and Schumann, 1998: 25). Previously, American bilateral aid to Africa went from a peak of US$ 2.4 billion in 1985 to US$1.2 billion in 1990, and this did not rise any higher throughout the 1990s (Reno, 2001: 200). In fact, the 1990s has been dubbed the “decade of disengagement” as American (and European) concentration focused itself on the new states emerging out of Central and Eastern Europe. This is not to say that there was a total abandonment; American administrations did remain engaged, particularly in matters pertaining to trade and development. Most graphically, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) was introduced as law in the United States in May 2000.

AGOA offered “tangible incentives for African countries to continue their efforts to open their economies and build free markets,” proving “reforming African countries with the most liberal access to the US market available to any country or region with which the United States does not have a Free Trade Agreement” (US Department of Commerce, 2007: 1). Due to the fact that, with the limited exclusion of Mauritius and South Africa, no African exporters of clothing were able to satisfy the original rules of origin provisions within AGOA, the rules of origin were modified (to last at first to September 2005 and then to September 2007) to permit least developed African countries to employ materials originally from least cost contractors worldwide. This provision had an important impact on textile manufacturing in Africa because as soon as AGOA came into effect, various textile manufacturers (mostly Asian) set themselves up in Africa as a means to evade the obstacles placed on them by the Multi-Fiber Agreement (MFA) of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The effect was that under AGOA, African exports of textiles and clothing to the United States boomed. In 2000 the value of SSA’s apparel exports to the US was US$776 million; by 2004 it had reached US$1,782, an increase of 130 percent. This collapsed when the special measures were scrapped.

Terrorism and the Securitization of US-Africa Policies

The material circumstances that facilitated terrorist activity had been long in place in Africa prior to 9/11, yet even after the embassy bombings of 1998 it would be fair to say that Africa-originated threats to American national security were somewhat off the radar screen of policymakers. This is not to say that there was a lack of awareness of the problems, particularly in the Horn of Africa. Certainly the regime in Sudan had long been cast as a “rogue state” and one which actively supported terrorism and provided sanctuary to terrorist groups who utilized Khartoum as a base to destabilize the whole region. Osama Bin Laden’s residency in Khartoum in the early 1990s is probably the most commented upon, but the attempted assassination of President Mubarek of Egypt in 1995 was equally controversial as the perpetrators were allegedly trained in Sudan and returned to Sudan once they had carried out the (unsuccessful) operation.

Furthermore, the 1991 collapse of Somalia’s central government had produced an anarchical milieu that was conducive for a variety of radical and extremist groups and it became known that a variety of Islamist organizations developed operating bases in Somalia, but also Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania. Yet despite this knowledge, the 1990s saw a reduction in resources directed at managing the growing threat. The number of American personnel serving as diplomats in Africa was cut by 15 percent, intelligence personnel were cut by over 30 percent, military and security assistance was reduced, and around a dozen United States Agency for International Development (USAID) missions were shut down (House Committee on International Relations, 2001: 21). Commentators made the case that such reductions impacted negatively on the ability by Washington to envisage and analyze processes in Africa that might pose a threat to American interests and in fact “create[d] acute vulnerabilities that can be brutally exploited” (ibid.: 21).

In response, the Clinton administration pointed to policies that “crafted and funded innovative counter-terrorism, counter-crime, and counter-narcotics strategies” in Africa, including police training centers in South Africa and American activity in brokering and helping sponsor peace processes in the Congo, Ethiopia and Eritrea, Mozambique and Sierra Leone (Rice, 2000). What is interesting to note here is that even as Washington under Clinton cut back on the amount of resources it was dedicating to Africa, the necessity of maintaining policies that would promote stability in Africa and, by extension, counter conflictual situations and security threats to American interests remained constant.

Thus in this sense the environment post-9/11 saw an intensification of security concerns about Africa from Washington’s perspective, rather than marking a new start. As J. Stephen Morrison, Director of the Africa Program for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, phrased it, “post-September 11, Africa matter[ed] to US interests in significant new ways, both good and bad. There [was] greater recognition in the United States that Africa’s institutional weaknesses, autocratic governance and economic marginality pose[d] a serious threat to US security interests” (House Committee on International Relations, 2001: 20). The problem of what became known as “failed states” in Africa was central to this revitalization of interest, stimulating “new international, not just US, attention to the potential security threats posed by failed or collapsed states as epicenters of crime, disease, terrorism, and instability” (Mills, 2004: 159). In this way, Africa was seen as playing a key role in the ongoing “War on Terror”; Bush’s secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, famously asserted to African ministers in Washington for an African Growth and Opportunity Act Forum that “Africa’s history and geography give it a pivotal role . . . Africa is critical to our war on terror” (quoted by House Committee in International Relations, 2001: 2). Similarly, Susan Rice informed the Committee on International Relations that “Africa is unfortunately the world’s soft underbelly for global terrorism.” Consequently, “we have to drain the swamps where the terrorists breed” (Rice, 2001).

In the post-9/11 period, therefore, American policies toward Africa became heavily securitized and a variety of new initiatives revolving around counterterrorism were developed. Security assistance programs in Africa were ramped up and a number of “antiterrorism-based ‘lily pads’” established across Africa as a means of rapidly deploying military forces (Mills, 2004: 264). Djibouti was probably the most well known of these “lily pads.” Washington also quickly secured the cooperation of various African regimes, with Memoranda of Understandings (MOUs) being signed with Gabon, Ghana, Namibia, Senegal, South Africa and Uganda focusing on the training of and provision of equipment to various African militaries.

As part of the wider policy to encourage military-to-military cooperation and training and as part of the “War on Terror,” a Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa (CJTF-HOA) was established in 2002, based in Djibouti. The CJTF-HOA’s mission was to “deter, preempt, and disable terrorist threats emanating from Somalia, Kenya and Yemen.” A year later, in 2003, Bush unveiled plans to spend US$100 million on various counterterrorism initiatives in the Horn of Africa (Lyman and Morrison, 2005: 77). An East Africa Counterterrorism Initiative (EACTI), incorporating Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda was announced, as well as the Pan-Sahel Initiative, which included Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger. An Economic Support Fund Aid was also introduced as a means to help Washington’s “strategic partners” on matters such as “cooperation on border control, freezing terrorist assets, implementation of the peace agreement in southern Sudan, and other activities” (Langton, 2006: 6). Thus “Bush . . . moved farther and faster than any recent administration in constructing a network of military and political alliances, with military-to-military linkages being expanded all across the continent” (Martin, 2004: 587). In short, within a relatively short period of time, the Bush administration had most of Africa covered in terms of military and security cooperation—way beyond those initial African states who had signed up to the “coalition of the willing” in the immediate aftermath of 9/11.

AFRICOM

In 2007, it was announced that a dedicated African military command, AFRICOM, was to be established, putting the continent on par, within the Pentagon’s command structure, with the Pacific Rim (Pacific Command), Europe (European Command), Latin America (Southern Command), the Middle East (Central Command), and North America (Northern Command). AFRICOM stood up in October 2008, taking control of 172 missions, activities, programs and exercises, which were previously divided among various military Commands. Previously, because Africa had been subsumed under other regional commands, the continent had never been a main concern for the American military. As has been mentioned, American military activities in Africa have been recently centered on the CJTF-HOA, based in Djibouti and providing training and assistance programs for African militaries to begin to conduct peace support operations and humanitarian missions. AFRICOM changes this scenario.

Officially, the two main functions of AFRICOM are aiding in stabilization operations and helping build indigenous security forces. The Command was formed to bring together all Defense Department programs on the African continent under one umbrella, to include missions ranging from antiterrorism programs in the Horn of Africa to maritime security initiatives, as well as military-to-military training exercises in numerous countries.

Yet the attempt to bring American military efforts dealing with the continent under one unified command was viewed with considerable concern by African leaders as well as Western critics, who saw AFRICOM as an instrument of American corporate interests. For instance, one American critique asserted that

AFRICOM is a dangerous continuation of US military expansion around the globe. Such foreign-policy priorities, as well as the use of weapons of war to combat terrorist threats on the African continent, will not achieve national security . . . The US militarization of Africa is . . . rationalized by George W. Bush’s claims that AFRICOM “will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa” and promote the “goals of development, health, education, democracy and economic growth”. Yet the Bush Administration fails to mention that securing and controlling African wealth and natural resources is key to US trade interests, which face growing competition from China. Transnational corporations rely on Africa for petroleum, uranium and diamonds—to name some of the continent’s bounty. (The Nation [New York], November 1, 2007)

African responses were equally critical: “It [was] disturbing to note that democracy, health, education, economic growth and development are being tied to military interests” commented one South African newspaper (Business Day [Johannesburg], February 14, 2007), while “surveys taken . . . in Africa of local leaders and journalists, among others, produced suspicions that US intentions with AFRICOM were to protect oil interests and ‘re-assert American power and hegemony globally’” (Middle East Times [Washington, DC], July 23, 2008).

The Pentagon had originally planned to base AFRICOM in Africa (Liberia and Botswana were both suggested as potential bases), but because the plans were met with almost universal hostility, the Command currently operates from Stuttgart, Germany, with two forward operational sites—one at Ascension Island, the other in Djibouti. AFRICOM has considerable work to do to overcome the popular view that it is a narrowly self-interested American instrument to secure access to oil resources and advance the “War on Terror” in Africa.

The Securitization of Africa’s Energy

The overwhelming dependency of the United States’ economy on oil is well known. In the 2006 State of the Union address, Bush famously asserted that “America [was] addicted to oil, which is often imported from unstable parts of the world.” The inherent security threat this posed to American interests was intrinsic to the President’s demand that the United States “replace more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025 . . . and make our dependence on Middle Eastern oil a thing of the past” (quoted in New York Times [New York], February 1, 2006). Apart from the potentiality of new energy technologies to help break this dependency, locating alternative sources of oil supplies other than those found in the Persian Gulf were central to Bush’s message. Africa fits neatly into this energy-security nexus, indeed is “central in its efforts to reduce [American] dependency” on oil from the Middle East (Rothchild and Emmanuel, 2005: 79).

Early on in the post-9/11 environment, the assistant secretary of state for Africa Walter Kansteiner had asserted in mid-2002 that “African oil is of strategic national interest to us” and this reality would only “increase and become more important as we go forward” (quoted in Volman, 2003: 574). Later that year it was stated that “Africa, the neglected stepchild of American diplomacy, is rising in strategic importance to Washington policy makers, and one word sums up the reason—oil” (Washington Post [Washington, DC] September 19, 2002). Yet such pronouncements were not simply a counterreaction to the Arab-originated attacks on September 11, 2001; reducing a dependency on oil from the Middle East was viewed as vital to American national interests prior to the calamitous events of 9/11. For instance, in May 2001 the National Energy Policy Development Group, chaired by Vice-President Dick Cheney, characterized America’s reliance on imported oil as a major national security issue, stating that the “Concentration of world oil production in any one region of the world” was a “challenge” and that the American economy’s reliance on Middle Eastern oil fostered “a condition of increased dependency on foreign powers that do not always have America’s interests at heart” (National Energy Policy Report quoted by Volman, 2003: 574). In this sense, 9/11 merely propeled and speeded up policy calculations that had been made before the attacks.

How and why Africa fitted into these above calculations was directly related to estimates that West Africa would supply 25 percent of imported oil to the United States by 2015, up from 14 percent in 2000 (Carmody, 2005: 100). As a result, “there is greater recognition that Africa matters to the United States as an important and growing source of non-Gulf oil” (House Committee on International Relations, 2001: 2). The growing abundance of oil supplies in the Gulf of Guinea fits with American policies to diversify oil supplies. Yet this provides a challenge to American policies given that West Africa was only in the initial stages of an “extended oil boom that will significantly enhance the global position of Nigeria and Angola and bring greater attention to emergent, unstable producers” such as Chad, Equatorial Guinea, and São Tomé and Príncipe (Africa Policy Advisory Panel, 2004: 6). Trying to promote stability and governance in such states will not be easy, though may prove vital to American security interests.

As noted above, the Cheney Report issued its finalized findings in May 2001, fully four months before 9/11. It can therefore be asserted that although 9/11 intensified American efforts to diversify supplies and consequently place even stronger weight on sourcing African oil, it was not 9/11 specifically that generated a major change in American energy diplomacy. Rather, 9/11 and the clamor...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Contents
• Chart
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction: Africa’s International Relations
• Chapter One: The Times They Are(n’t) A-changing: American Policies in Africa
• Chapter Two: Of Spin and Mirrors: Britain and New Labour’s Policies toward Africa
• Chapter Three: Effronterie Magnifique: Between La Rupture and Realpolitik in Franco-African Relations
• Chapter Four: Back to the Future? The Rising Chinese Relationship with Africa
• Chapter Five: Hands across the Water: Indian Engagement in Africa
• Chapter Six: The Empire(s) Strike Back? The European Union and Africa
• Chapter Seven: Why Do We Need Political Scientists? Africa and the International Financial Institutions
• Chapter Eight: Oil and Its Impact on Africa’s International Relations
• Bibliography
• Index
• eCopyright