The 3 games in the USA - Africa summit:

America playing catch up with the Orient; Obama playing legacy politricks; and Africa playing host

Last week President Obama hosted Africa’s crème de la crème in Washington at the ‘US-Africa summit’. This was by all means a good thing and deserves a round of applause. However, it is imperative that Africans put this meeting into context and reflect on its efficacy.

Ask yourself: who decided the timing and schedule of the US – Africa summit? Who decided the venue? Who elected who to invite and who to alienate? Who determined the agenda?

Symbiosis or clever lopsidedness?
This summit came at a point in time when both the USA and Africa need one another.  Maybe USA needed Africa more. To claw back on Chinese influence in Africa after a lost decade fighting terror in the middle-East, to reassert US hegemony and ‘big-brotherdom’, to tap into Africa natural resources and to increase trade and investment in the region.

Trade: - Over the past decade, US-Africa trade declined substantially when some of US arch rivals and Africa’s trading partners like the European Union, China and Japan expanded their portfolio of trade and investment in the continent. Notably, EU-Africa trade expanded to an all-time high of about US$200 billion in 2013. Chinese – Africa trade likewise increased exponentially from just about US$10 billion in 2000 to US$ 170 billion in 2013 (largely exports to Africa - 70%). Meanwhile big brother USA’s trade that stood at US$80 billion (US$ 40 billion imports from Africa due to AGOA and US$ 20 billion exports to Africa) in 2011 declined to US$ 60 billion (US$ 40 imports from Africa and US$ 20 billion exports to Africa) in 2013. It is important to note that even the small portfolio of trade with Africa (US$ 20 billion exports) was very crucial for American jobs – supporting over 100,000 jobs. Therefore for America, this summit could not have been for a better reason than to explore and expand export opportunities for American goods and services in Africa.

 For Africa, this summit came at a time when the continent was ripe with opportunity and required strategic partnerships for trade, investment and for combating some of the ills that have perennially hamstrung economic, social and political progress in the continent like terrorism and violent conflict. It’s important to note that Africa’s trade with the rest of the globe accounts for only about 2%. Yet Africa is home to 14% of the global population; has an increasing middleclass population which will expand to 100 million by the end of 2015 and has consumer spending projected to increase to 80% by 2020.  This means market, that the continent could bargain with or leverage for intra-Africa trade. Moreover, African countries are prospecting or already exploiting and commercialising substantive natural resources, oil and gas, in Ghana, Mozambique, Angola, Tanzania, Kenya, Uganda, and South Sudan for example. African countries have also made considerable progress in regional integration and cooperation. The East African community for example was one of the fastest growing regional blocks in 2013. All this is evidence to the economic and political opportunities that Africa is realising that require strategic partnership and cooperation (multilateral or bilateral) like with the USA.

Just a playing ground or real prospects?

Africa is now undoubtedly a pot of gold, and a beehive of economic and political activity that could be a tipping point in global political economy. How the super powers like China and USA handle Africa could mean great opportunities or their greatest undoing. Could Africa be merely the amphitheatre for deep seated political and economic wrangles between the West and the Orient? Are African leaders alive to this reality? How could Africans exploit this for the best interest of the continent? These are difficult questions that require reflection amongst Africans.

Nonetheless, three possible good things that I hoped the summit could herald. Maybe Africans should check with their Presidents and entourage if any of these came through:  

·         Increasing USA Africa trade and investment through a strengthen and extended AGOA.  

·      Enhancing trade competitiveness in Africa: - African countries can exploit partnerships with USA to speed up progress towards meeting the Bali agreements on trade facilitation for example. This could also pave the way for useful Public Private Partnerships under AGOA that enhance competitiveness. Such links could also help build the capacity of private sector in African countries to promote investment in key sectors like energy, agriculture and other trade related infrastructure.

·   Africa US cooperation could also support and deepen regional integration in many of Africa’s mushrooming regional blocks like the EAC, ECOWAS, SADC, and COMESA. US partnership in Trade Mark East Africa is a good example of how strategic cooperation could facilitate integration.

Tricky partnerships

Nonetheless, the flipside is that this manner of cooperation or partnerships between the USA and Africa could as well have been detrimental to Africa or yield dismal returns. The summit itself could just have been another of the many conferences of ‘nothing’ that have been witnessed in the past. The agreements and pronouncements made also risk benefiting the USA more, judging by the lopsidedness of the conduct of the meeting.

However, one thing poses a greater threat to possibilities of a favourable outcome both for the USA and African countries. Both the USA and African (as individual states and as AU) appear to be ill prepared for the outcomes of the conference. Why? The US is not the only country that has noticed that potential opportunities in Africa. China has, and adapted quickly, fronting innovative modalities for development financing (that some African countries are warming up to), pursuing fewer restrictions on credit/loans and assistance strategies. The USA on the other hand is stuck in idealist modalities for development cooperation. Further, while China is actively and aggressively engaging Africa in all corners, US infrastructure for economic diplomacy in Africa appears lame and ill suited to succeed. China currently has over 150 commercial attaches in different corners of Africa while the US department for commerce has presence in just about four countries in the continent each of which supported by no more than two officers.

Africa on the other hand has failed to determine a common political-economic agenda and framework for haggling with potential partners in the international arena. The continent (AU) was unable to meaningfully influence the conduct of the summit in terms of setting the agenda, agreeing the modalities for engagement and so on. However, it is fair to note that some regional blocks like the East African Community met ahead of the summit in Nairobi and compromised to front some of the EAC’s infrastructure projects like Lamu Port Southern Sudan-Ethiopia Transport (LAPSSET) Corridor project as a block instead of individual bilateral engagements. In fact the architecture of the summit was in such a way that it couldn’t allow serious bilateral or even multilateral dialogue for substantive action.

Legacy politricks?

The question that cannot escape being asked is that about the timing of the summit. Why did the Obama administration choose 2014 to host this meeting? Why so late in the course of his tenure? Was Africa ever seriously on his agenda? Was this Obama’s clever way of making peace with his clearly underwhelmed kins? Is this summit for Obama’s memoirs? Every US president has had something to take home to the books in their sunset days. Bill Clinton penned the Africa Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA), that though not been fully exploited was something both for Africa and for the Democrat. George Bush, despite the bad name took the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to his memoirs as one of the greatest initiatives for Africa. PEPFAR was very successful in supporting programming and interventions for combating HIV/AIDS. So, when all is said and done, was this Obama’s legacy card for Africa?

Beyond selfies, cowboy boots and statesons, what?

In summary, when all the picture ops are exploited, when all the dinning and winning on White house south lawn are done; when all the interviews with CNN and curtains drawn o the US-Africa summit, what have African leaders brought back home? Beyond selfies, cowboy boots and Stetsons; what should they have returned to Africa with? May be three things:

·     Extension and strengthening of the Africa Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA) beyond its expiry date in 2016. Strengthen the Act and encourage African countries to fully exploit the opportunities it offers. There are some countries that exported very little to the USA despite the provisions of AGOA.

·     A road map to a US-Africa trade and investment treaty: - The leaders could have laid the ground work for a bold move towards ratifying a treaty of partnerships (not necessarily of equals as many African leaders demand). They could have left Washington with a framework of action towards actualising this in the future.

·     From aid to partnerships: - This summit should have ignited the departure from more of aid or Official Development Assistance (ODA) or Humanitarian Assistance towards more of meaningful and inclusive partnerships for development financing, for combating terrorism and violent conflict, and addressing food insecurity and disasters like Ebola and HIV/AIDS. 

You do the math; sum up the expense of summoning 50 heads of state to the US for some 72 hrs and the returns. Check the bag of goodies that your ‘leader’ brought back home. Was it worth the hype? Are the prospects real?

AU; wobbling shamelessly like tuk tuk tires as bloodletting endures in South Sudan, CAR

This is the reason I got little patience for that cabal of selfish power mongers calling itself the African Union (AU). You have whined big time about how the west (US, France, UK, Germany etc) hijacked the process in Libya, Somalia. Big question is: 

What has the AU done in the wake of genocide in South Sudan; bloodletting in the Central African Republic? Even Somalia (what have been the returns thus far?).

When it was time to yank tirades at the west about the ICC, about sovereignty and imperialism - you were super-vocal. When it was time to peddle cheap rhetoric about the 'alternative' that is China - you made the loudest prolonged noise (in unison). When it was time to yap aimlessly about homosexuality - folks had loads to say uh?

But when serious commitment and concrete action is urgently needed to address some of Africa's saddest realities in South Sudan, CAR, Northern Nigeria, Eastern DRC, Kenya - people are wobbling like tuk tuk tires.

SHAME - where is Mugabe? Museveni? Jonathan? Zuma? Uhuru? Where are they with the balls now? Where are those others, multilaterals so bent on setting up political federations and unions like the East African Community, IGAD etc. Show us something.

#ListentoSouthSudan

Jubilee: too clever for counsel, yet too foolish

The folly of this Jubilee government is its overconfidence and false sense of importance. Folks are too full of themselves they wouldn’t listen.

I watched senate proceedings as Jubilee senators heckled down Senator James Orengo advising majority leader Kithure Kindiki to pursue Assembly of State parties if they genuinely wanted to help the President and his deputy William Ruto. Instead they thumped their chests because they control the Kenyan legislature. They went ahead to complicate matters with their withdrawal from the Rome Statute motion. Tragedy is, jubilee has some of the most brilliant attorneys in this country in Senate and National Assembly. But they reduced themselves to cannon fodder, spewing tirades at the international community that they shockingly didn’t appear to understand they would depend on when they went to the AU, UN Security Council (UNSC) etc.

Like the Swahili said – “Mwenda omo na tezi marejeo ngamani” - He who goes from bow to stern must return to the bilge

We are back to square one. It has now dawned on the spin masters in the Jubilee Kingdom that they won’t shout or bully their way out of the ICC. Folks are exhausting options. Amazingly, now they are pushing an amendment to the Rome Statute to allow Uhuru Kenyatta and William Ruto attend trials via video link through the same Assembly of State parties that Orengo advised them to pursue but they arrogantly told off.

We have come from "a sitting president cannot and won’t be humiliated at The Hague" to begging for amendments to help save face. The ICC is inevitable after all. Cool, the proposed amendment is backed by the AU (I elect not to comment on the toothlessness of the AU). But, the Assembly of State Parties isn't a club exclusive to African despots, so they can push and shove amendments at their whims.

Goodness me, the Assembly of States will also decide whether sitting heads of state should be exempt from ICC prosecutions. Why didn’t people think of pursuing this all this while?

Keep enjoying the pleasure of opinion without the discomfort of thought. Therein lies your downfall.

Listen Mr. African 'STATESMAN': Rants of a Troubled Pan-Africanist

OK listen AU, IGAD, EAC, NEPAD and all other multilateral African institutions and ‘statesmen’ who’ve perfected the art of perennially ranting and whining about ‘Western Imperialism’. I am talking as a Pan-Africanist disturbed by the ingenuity, ineptitude and slack of many a folk in the exclusive club of African leadership. 

Listen, an intergovernmental, inter-agency summit is underway in London, United Kingdom as I write. It’s the Somalia Conference convened by British Prime Minister David Cameron and his allies to address the troubles and restoration of Somalia. I know you are probably there already - INVITED, and must have carried elaborate delegations with you. Invited to participate? Invited to provide quorum? Or maybe just to be placated? Maybe to be arm twisted like you traditionally have been. Don’t you find it uneasy, disturbing or just funny that you are invited by a foreign entity, the same ‘Western Imperialists’ that you detest so much to deliberate on an endemic African predicament, a shameful scar on the Emblem of Africanism that is squarely on your mandate? Aren’t you a tad bit disturbed by your always sluggish, last-man response to matters of African welfare?

I listened pensively to presidential speeches at the recently concluded AU summit in Addis Ababa: African leaders whining, distraught and disenfranchised, faulting the West, NATO for their role in the destabilization of an African flagship country – Libya. But come to think of it, beyond that barrage of rhetoric, emotions and the display of flaring tempers orchestrated by the likes of Zimbabwean ‘statesman’ Robert Mugabe, What did you do about Libya? How much seriousness did you commit to standing with an African state? How much resources or even time did you devote to rescuing Libya? After how long did you act? Anyway, I guess my questions could be indeed irrelevant for a people who can’t even agree on a stable AU leadership, a people clearly disillusioned and oblivious of their mandate.

How shameful it is that you just get invited to an assembly of this calibre. How humbling it is that you will merely sign the resolutions but without the muscle and space to take centre stage in their execution. How I wish this would have been a partnership at the least, a joint caucus of an African multilateral institution with the western allies OR at best an African initiative strategized and executed by Africans drawing in international allies. As it is, I guess you haven’t mustered any serious leverage in these deliberations and you won’t be able to bargain and argue more aptly for Somalia, the Horn of Africa, and Africa. God forbid you might be participating effectively as rubberstamp ink, in a premeditated process of ratifying already engineered English/Western judgements on the prospects for Somalia.

Isn’t it time you cut the rhetoric and got more proactive, more strategic and more creative in sorting out the challenges bedevilling our beautiful troubled continent? Isn’t it time such big African economies like Nigeria, South Africa as well as promising ones like Ghana, Botswana rolled up their sleeves and contributed more in terms of resources, time and delved into the murky waters of African Unity like their counterparts in Asia, Europe and South America do? 


For as long as you proceed with the prevailing ambivalence about these imperatives, you continue to sell out Africa – Cut the rhetoric folks; get down to work!