Trump administration will not have sweet medicine for Africa
• Trade in commodities will continue but the continent will not be top of the list of foreign policy priorities while humanitarian aid will come under review
On November 8, to everyone’s surprise, US voters — and perhaps to a lesser extent, Russia President Vladimir Putin — gave Donald Trump the keys to the Kingdom. And as he prepares to assume the throne on January 20, suffice to say he will have a full plate of foreign policy challenges awaiting him on day one. Friend and foe alike have got to be more than a little concerned as Trump will be like no other US president before him. And they know it.
Iran, Syria, North Korea and Islamic State (IS) now comprise the 2017 iteration of the “Axis of Evil”, as George W Bush so aptly coined it back in 2002. Add our “frenemies” such as China and Russia and the group resembles a school of piranhas waiting to strike a gravely injured fish swimming by. Each one poses multidimensional foreign policy nightmares for Trump — everything from armed conflicts at hot spots around the world to trade disagreements, nuclear threats, terrorism, cyber security and state-sponsored hacking, climate change, currency manipulation and energy.
Given these ever-amplifying foreign policy challenges that Trump will inherit from Barack Obama, one has to wonder what US policy towards Africa — and other emerging markets — will look like under his administration. If I were the president of an African country, Trump’s election would be, shall we say, more than a little disconcerting.
Here’s why. The US’s view of the world is changing — and the world’s view of the US is changing too. Simply put, much of Africa will not be of core strategic interest to the US under Trump.
Historically, Africa as a whole has never been a policy priority for the US but did command differing levels of attention and assistance depending on who occupied the White House. Former president Bill Clinton signed Agoa (African Growth and Opportunity Act) into law in 2000 but that was his primary contribution. Conversely, by far the worst atrocity during his time in office was that close to 800,000 Rwandans were killed in brutal ethnic cleansings.
Although the Clinton administration and the international community, including the UN, was aware of the genocide taking place, no action was taken.
President George W Bush’s Africa policy was probably the most robust of any modern-day president’s. He provided US assistance in helping to end civil wars in Sudan, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Angola, Liberia and Sierra Leone even though direct US interests were not at risk. In his second term, he launched development programmes in several of these countries to help them recover on an economic and humanitarian level.
AIDS PROGRAMMES
President Obama, despite his Kenyan roots, has fallen short by most measures. But he continued to fund HIV/AIDS programmes there, increasing the number of people receiving treatment from 1.7-million to 6.7-million, a notable achievement. And he introduced the much touted Power Africa to try to address the continent’s critical power shortages, although it has not lived up to the hype.
But Trump will be markedly different to any of his predecessors. While it is obvious that any country’s foreign policy is ultimately for their own benefit, Trump will take it to the extreme. His foreign policy will be formulated around his campaign slogan, “America First”. And he means it literally.
Just like a new management team coming into a recently acquired company, Trump and his cabinet of supply-side business leaders and retired generals will take a wrecking ball to those policies not considered strategically vital – and solidly in the US’s interest. Nothing will be off the table.
Therein lies the problem for much of Africa. Is it essential to the US — in the eyes of Trump — to provide Africa with deep economic, humanitarian and military support that is funded by US taxpayer money?
There is little doubt in Washington’s diplomatic circles that Trump’s Africa policies will be a far cry from those of Obama and Bush.
The first hint of how Africa would be viewed by the incoming administration was gleaned during the presidential campaign. As a candidate, Trump paid little attention to Africa in his speeches and referred to the continent only in relation to al-Qaeda’s 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and he came under fire for comments related to the large number of Somali refugees in Minnesota, a state Hillary Clinton later won. She never mentioned Africa either.
Africa risks being relegated to the periphery as the strategic interests of many of its key allies begin to change with the gradual weakening of globalisation — and the rise of nationalism — in the West. It is the populist equivalent of the Big Bang. And now, along with the UK and US, Italy, France, Spain and Germany are all starting to draw inwards and to veer to the ideological and political right. Given that the US and Europe are two of Africa’s three largest trading partners this does not bode well for many African nations.
Make no mistake, however, while he will focus on US interests at home first, Trump will not disengage the US from the rest of world as the media keeps reminding us. That is simply not realistic. History will remember it as pure campaign rhetoric. Obama himself, in his final press conference on December 16th, said that “all foreign policy should get looked at with a fresh set of eyes” by any new administration. And it will be.
REBUILD THE MILITARY
Trump has made it quite clear his first order of business will be to rebuild the military and has backed this up by nominating retired Marine general James “Mad Dog” Mattis as defence secretary. If ever there was a definitive statement to illustrate Trump’s intentions, Mattis is it.
His campaign slogan should have read: “America First. You’re Second.” However, to comprehend how he will approach Africa and other geopolitical interests, one needs to understand what makes Trump who he is. First and foremost, he is a businessman: a negotiator. A deal maker. A salesman. A closer. A showman.
And second, he’s a New Yorker. Brash and no-holds barred. And he will become indignant if you cross him.
As a businessman, Trump sees everything through a single lens — return on investment (ROI). This is what he has based every business decision on for more than 40 years. It is the tape measure in his toolkit. It quantifies what he gets back on his investments. And now, as president, he will apply that same ratio to foreign policy to measure what the US gets back from its allies. Simply stated, what is their ROI to the US? On his desk in the Oval Office should be a nameplate that reads: “Donald J Trump: President and Deal Maker in Chief.”
The difficulty for Africa is that its geopolitical and economic value — as it relates to Trump’s vision for the US — simply won’t land it anywhere near the top of his list of foreign policy priorities. To Trump the businessman, much of Africa has a low ROI — certainly compared to countries such as the UK, France, Israel, Japan, South Korea and Germany, not to mention “frenemies” such as Russia and China.
There will, of course, continue to be trade between Africa and the US as commodities are always an economic driver irrespective of their current prices. But there is every reason to expect that under a Trump administration the US will be less engaged in Africa especially where it concerns the expenditure of taxpayer money on economic and humanitarian development initiatives. The reality is that the US is a net exporter of financial aid and humanitarian assistance to Africa — net of the commodities and resources that the US imports from it. And because of this, much of the continent will be caught in Trump’s crosshairs, ultimately putting many of these important aid programmes at risk.
So what will be the defining theme with regard to the broader US policy towards Africa under Trump? Simple. Combating terrorism.
Outside of oil and other extractive commodities, positioning the US for the fight against terror is Africa’s primary value to Trump. Stated more bluntly: kill IS and all its offspring. This is Africa’s ROI. The US faces serious and sustained security challenges across Africa. Terrorism, which not only has the capacity to destabilise key African countries, is also a breeding ground for exporting violence to the US and Europe. Hot spots such as Libya must build and maintain its government while fighting to eradicate IS. And the IS-aligned Nigerian militant group Boko Haram continues to wreak havoc as does al-Qaeda-linked Somali terror group Al-Shabaab. As a result, the US will be forced to engage these terror threats emanating from Africa.
REAL OPPORTUNITY
But there is a real opportunity to broaden Trump’s limited policy view if African leaders choose to act upon it. The door remains very much open to them to reach out and appeal to Trump the businessman. Trump the deal maker. Trump the negotiator. Trump the salesman. His ego would welcome it. African countries have the opportunity to change their relationship with the US — and take ownership of that process — instead of waiting to see what Trump does.
Acting proactively will enable Africa to potentially increase its ROI — and change its link to the US from that of “donor-recipient” to one based on mutual benefit. And that’s a deal that Donald Trump the businessman will make every time.
But so far, of the 54 nations that comprise Africa, only a handful of presidents have congratulated Trump. Like him or not, he is the president of the world’s lone superpower and is reassessing everything. Therein lies the opportunity.
So once Trump assumes the presidency, it would probably be a good idea if the leaders of some of Africa’s other countries reached out to him with this message: “We’re open for business. Let’s make a deal.”
That’s a message he’ll definitely understand.