A tall task
Secretary Tillerson makes needed visit to Africa
Rex Tillerson’s first trip to Africa as secretary of state is underway, with a number of subjects to pursue. His stops include Ethiopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Chad and Nigeria.
One of Mr. Tillerson’s tasks will be to gauge the lay of the land and soothe ruffled feathers. A number of leaders on the continent expressed hurt and anger after President Donald Trump’s derogatory reference to African nations in January negotiations with U.S. lawmakers over immigration. A second chore will be to tell leaders that Washington does really care about Africa, in spite of the Trump administration not having named an assistant secretary of state for African affairs, the key position in the State Department.
Inmatters of specific policy, Mr. Tillerson will be seeking to convince African nations not to bite hook, line and sinker on China’s many efforts to sign them onto a tight trade and investment economic relationship. America has never been terribly effective in displacing European colonial nations — Belgium, France, Germany, Portugal and Britain — in taking advantage of African trade and investment opportunities. That is partly due to just those colonial ties. It is also partly due to American companies’ lack of aggressiveness and gumption in pursuing tradeand investment in Africa.
Mr. Tillerson is no stranger to Africa, having made many visits in his former role running ExxonMobil. He is likely to play on those previous relationships with oil-export-dependent African nations that include Angola, Chad,Equatorial Guinea and Nigeria.
He will have specific missions in each country, depending on issues and U.S. relations with each state. In Ethiopia, the first stop on Wednesday, he addressed representatives of the continent-wide African Union, based in the capital Addis Ababa, warning them particularly about the Chinese. Presumably he also discussed with Ethiopian leaders their ongoing squabble with Egypt over Ethiopia’s new Nile River dam, which the Egyptians see as potentially cutting off some of their water.
In Djibouti, the topic has to be the American-leased military base there, Camp Lemonnier, with some 4,000 of the 6,000 U.S. troops in Africa in residence, plus fighter-bomber aircraft and drones. The ostensible reason for the base in Djibouti, the former French Somaliland, is to counter the alleged Islamist threat from the rebel al-Shabab in bordering Somalia. That brushfire war with them has continued for 12 years now, without much change in the overall situation. The initial U.S. military involvement in Somalia began in 1992. The Chinese alsohave a base in Djibouti.
Kenya, through its military alliance with the United States, has become exposedto terrorist actions, including the 2013 attack on a Nairobi shopping center that killed 67. It also has a somewhat erratic electoral record. There were two runs at its presidential elections this year; in January, the losing candidate had himself sworn in as the “people’s president” alongside the victor in both elections, the incumbent President Uhuru Kenyatta. Kenya needs to assess whether it gains or losesoverall from the U.S. embrace.
Chad, basically a dictatorship, has become a center of U.S. military antiterrorist activities in West Africa. Nigeria’s problems include a continuing simmering Islamic rebellion in its northeast, trouble in its southeastern oil fields, and a president in questionable health.
Mr. Tillerson gets points for taking on this trip, with all of the problems he will encounter. The U.S. budget has not given him much in the way of resources to deal with any of these issues, but showing up is the first step.