Between Sino-Africa and US-Africa summits The much anticipated United States of America-Africa Leaders’ Summit finally held in Washington with 35 presidents, nine prime ministers, three vice-presidents, two foreign ministers and a king in attendance. It is the largest gathering ever of African leaders for a summit with the US. Predictably, the summit opened with the US Vice-President, Mr. Joe Biden, and Secretary of State, Mr. John Kerry, urged the guests to properly internalise western liberal democratic values which they described as “not just American values but universal values”. Kerry particularly urged their guests “not to alter national constitutions for personal or political gains,” and vowed that the US would continue to support the work of gay activists in Africa, a western commitment that has clashed fiercely with African values, which many African leaders have kicked against. However, the summit already dubbed a legacy hunt that the first US Africa-American president wants to seize for a continent, where his commitment was widely considered questionable, took some bold steps to engage Africa, which President Barack Obama said “happens to be one of the continents where Africa is most popular and people feel affinity for our way of life”. Whether the summit seeks to seriously engage Africa in a long term comprehensive and productive relations or a mere knee-jerk reaction to Africa’s rising global profile to which many important actors, especially China have already constructively engaged, will be clearer in the future. In fact, China overtook the US as Africa’s largest trading partner in 2009, nine years after Beijing in consultation with Africa founded and inaugurated the Forum on China-Africa Co-operation, a mechanism for regular contacts and consultation with the two sides with in-between follow-up process along with three yearly ministerial conference that brings together leaders of the two sides. The last ministerial conference which was the fifth held in Beijing in 2012 and the sixth will hold in South Africa next year. The US-Africa summit was the first Washington effort to deal directly with Africa preferring in the past to engage the continent through the multi-lateral financial institutions especially the Breton Woods institutions, namely the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund- that she dominates. Maybe, the alarm bell that the new development bank established by the BRICS countries – Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, at their last crucial summit in Brazil portends to the end or at least a considerable weakening of the monopoly of global financial governance of the Breton Woods institutions could have jolted Washington into a direct economic involvement in Africa, whose rising profile would impact on any new emerging global financial and economic architecture. Considered in whichever respects, the US-Africa summit heralds a crucial awareness in which the US has raised the profile of its engagement with Africa beyond her previous obsession with security concerns and political control. Though profoundly troubled by deepening and widening poverty, Africa represents a very bright economic opportunities and prospects, and key countries and regions, who appreciate these prospects, have since deepened their engagement with the continent. Obama announced a $14b private sector led investment at the summit to Africa and while this is welcome, only time will tell if Washington will walk the talk. Moreover, private sector operators hedge their risks in proportion to their profit calculations and do not necessarily follow government directives. To this pledge, the deputy national security adviser, Ben Rhodes, claimed that, “we do believe, we bring something unique to the table-we are less focused on resources from Africa and more focused on deepening trade and investment relationships.” For over 50 years since most of African states became independent from classical colonial rule, the continent’s natural resources were ruthlessly exploited and expropriated by her western partners, including the US, which monopolistically fixed both the costs and terms of resource extractions and the prices they paid for such. For as long as this very un fair market relationship existed between Africa and the West, the continent was blighted with the incremental paradox of the development of under-development with consequences of political instability and social tensions. The contemporary political challenges and crises of growth without development in Africa owe mainly to the past relationships of Africa with the West. The structural dependency of Africa on the West was the key factor in the disarticulation of the continent’s internal economic integration. The legacy of that structural dependency was more acute in the lack of any meaningful infrastructural connect within the continent. The involvement of extra-western powers especially China is currently challenging this critical obstacle which must be overcome if Africa is to attain sustainable development. One thing that is clear about the western finger-pointing at China’s resource extraction in Africa is that the latter’s resources have never been lying idly beneath the ground before the Chinese came. The resources have actually been viciously exploited and extracted by the West, the only problem being that Africa never really got the market value for it and neither gleaming stadia nor even presidential palaces as vain as they were, was built even as the resources make the West’s industrial age more glorious and her citizens more affluent. If ever the West, America inclusive, contemplates a balanced and even a fairly equal partnership with Africa, it will be mainly thanks to Sino-Africa co-operation and the deepening engagement of others like India, Turkey, and Brazil that currently challenges the formerly unequal engagement of the West with Africa. Even the Western standard narrative that resource hunger drove China to Africa is as historically deficient as it is politically motivated. Long before China became a key factor in Africa’s economic stage, she had actively been in solidarity to Africa’s historic aspiration to end colonial rule and achieve freedom. In the stormy years of Africa’s anti-colonial struggle, China was a reliable friend and partner. After the end of formal colonial rule in Africa, China maintained a high profile support in the struggle of the then new states to achieve self-reliance through building an integrated and balanced national economies. The effort of China in this regard, culminated in the support for the construction of Africa’s longest railway line till date, which links the Zambia copper mines to Dar el-Salam port in Tanzania designed to bypass the South African port whose, then despicable apartheid, regime was the main western/American linchpin in destabilising the Southern Africa region and the rest of the continent. In constructing the famous Tanzam railway line in the 1970s, the same project that was described as economically unviable by western powers, when they were first approached, China laid the foundations for an economic engagement of a win-win framework with Africa. Copyright PUNCH.All rights reserved. This material, and other digital content on this website, may not be reproduced, published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed in whole or in part without prior express written permission from PUNCH. 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Posted on: Mon, 11 Aug 2014 01:58:11 +0000
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