In August, the American army closed its last military base in Niger, which deemed its military cooperation agreement with the United States “illegal”. In May, Ethiopia described the US ambassador’s speech on its internal affairs as “unsolicited advice”… African countries’ discontent and distrust of the United States go far beyond isolated cases.
BEIJING/NAIROBI, Oct. 11 (Xinhua) — In August, the U.S. military closed its last military base in Niger, which deemed its military cooperation agreement with the United States “illegal.” In May, Ethiopia described the US ambassador’s speech on its internal affairs as “unsolicited advice”… African countries’ discontent and distrust of the United States go far beyond isolated cases.
Washington’s loss of credibility is manifested by a decrease in the positive perception of American leadership on the continent. According to the latest Gallup poll on the perception of global leadership, the median approval rate for the United States in Africa, an indicator of the country’s soft power, fell from 59% in 2022 to 56% in 2023. Among the four major countries surveyed, the United States is the only one not to have seen its image improve in Africa in 2023.
Despite the leading role played by the United States in African affairs, Washington’s credibility deficit on the continent persists and even risks increasing in certain cases.
BROKEN PROMISES
Since the first US-Africa summit under the Obama administration in 2014, African countries have had high hopes for US investment promises. Yet instead of increasing, trade between the United States and Africa has declined significantly since then.
According to the United States Census Bureau, trade between the country and Africa, which amounted to 113 billion dollars in 2010, contracted to 67.4 billion in 2023. According to “Statista”, a global data and economic intelligence platform, after a peak in 2014, i.e. 69 billion dollars, foreign direct investments (FDI) in Africa from the United States fell to 44.81 billion dollars in 2020 before reach 56.29 billion in 2023.
In 2018, the Trump administration launched the “Forward Africa” program, which aimed to stimulate African growth through trade and investment. However, Mr Trump, who never visited the continent during his term in office, cut the budget of the US Agency for International Development (USAID).
Furthermore, American aid, often conditioned on so-called human rights, is fraught with uncertainty.
“While the US-led response to climate change, development finance and great power competition appears to continue to favor the global North…this over-promise and under-delivery has not “only reinforces the well-established reputation that Washington is an inherently unreliable, even hypocritical, partner,” Cameron Hudson, Senior Fellow of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), said in a CSIS report.
ARROGANCE AND DISCONNECTION FROM AFRICAN REALITIES
A notable episode of the 2022 United States-Africa summit was widely reported: more than 50 African leaders were transported by bus to the meeting location. Kenyan President William Ruto, who was indignant at this unceremonial reception, denounced the wrongdoing of “cramming us into buses like schoolchildren”.
“The United States-Africa summit (will) be a failure if the Americans do not treat Africans as equals,” according to Arikana Chihombori-Quao, former representative of the African Union to the United States, “historically, “The United States considered Africa its ‘backyard’ and practiced racial discrimination against Africans.”
In addition to the arrogance displayed, the American approach towards Africa is characterized by a profound disconnection from African realities.
According to Guinea-Bissau political scientist Seco Cassama, the United States completely ignores the African reality: “its traditions, its civilizations always impose their interests above those of Africans.” Mr. Cassama affirmed that the American initiative is often an imposition which does not respect African reality.
Take as an example the military presence of the United States in Niger. According to data analysis by Olayinka Ajala, lecturer in politics and international relations at Leeds Beckett University in the United Kingdom, despite the US operation that began in 2013, terrorist activities and deaths have continued to increase since 2014. In fact, the number of attacks has increased significantly since 2018, when the United States opened Air Base 201 in Agadez, highlighting the ineffectiveness of American strategies, which do not take into account local realities or the feelings of the populations.
INTERFERENCE AN IMPOSITION
In September, three American citizens involved in an attempted coup in the Democratic Republic of Congo were sentenced to death by a Congolese military court. Another case of US interference in African internal affairs.
In March 2023, during the visit of American Vice President Kamala Harris to Africa, Fred M’membe, president of the Socialist Party of Zambia, accused the United States of having orchestrated coups d’état and overthrown several governments and assassinated African leaders. “Today, such a country comes to teach us what democracy is.”
According to Ibrahima Diao, a Senegalese academic on international relations, “in most of its infrastructure projects in developing countries, the United States imposes its democratic values.”
Political interference, a great obstacle in U.S.-Africa relations, manifests itself through economic means. AGOA (Africa Growth and Opportunity Act), as a unilateral preferential policy, is the cornerstone of the United States’ economic exchanges with Africa. Recipient countries must meet many non-economic standards, such as democratic reforms, the rule of law and the protection of human rights.
If a country loses its eligibility, it does not resort to any dispute resolution procedure. AGOA has thus become an important tool for US intervention in the affairs of African countries.
On January 1, 2022, the United States canceled Ethiopia’s privileges under AGOA. In October 2023, the United States suddenly announced that, due to human rights and democracy concerns, Gabon, Niger, Uganda and the Central African Republic would be excluded from AGOA starting from January 1, 2024.
The United States is using its superpower status and economic power to intimidate other countries, in a display of authority and arrogance that offends Africa, points out the Herald newspaper of Zimbabwe, a country long under the rule of American sanctions.
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