U.S.-Africa Relations in the Age of Mutual Misunderstanding

[caption id="attachment_10066" align="aligncenter" width="615"] Trucks at a port in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. The tension between trade and aid remains front and center in the economic relationship between the Global North and South. Photo by Rob Beechey/World Bank, via Flickr. Creative Commons.[/caption]

A quarter century since the end of the Cold War, the relationship between Global North and South remains fraught with misconceptions. Diplomatic relations, trade, economic cooperation, and security cooperation, especially between Africa and the United States, are continuously being negotiated within a murky climate of mutual misunderstanding.

Africans are suspicious of U.S. motives, and feel that the United States vilifies them as corrupt and undemocratic. The United States and other Western countries continue to hammer the Global South on issues of governance, democracy, human rights, and the need for state investment in economic welfare. In response to these claims, African countries cite neocolonialism, hegemony, geopolitical double standards, and a lack of sensitivity to unique African cultural and historical experiences.

Some of these perceptions have bases in truth; some are born of superficial readings of history and everyday life; and still others are a result of biased cultural perspectives. Something more akin to reality lies in between. Policy researchers and policymakers need to invest more time to tease out these realities and chart a way forward toward joint global leadership that addresses shared global challenges.

Freeing the Market

One issue that confronts both developed and developing countries is the question of trade and markets versus development aid. The people of the global south generally value free trade and direct foreign investment more than foreign aid. Leaders of some of the more economically progressive countries in Africa such as Rwanda, Botswana, Ethiopia and Namibia vehemently argue that Western aid, appreciated as it may be in many instances, is not free of political manipulation and often functions as a means of control. Trade and open markets, if allowed to operate according to their own forces, are more constructive engines of development. And although too many developed countries exercise protectionism abroad, which disrupts this force and pushes African nations back toward aid, it is also evident that this is often a reaction to the Western world's own protectionist policies.

Many go even further and argue that aid from the Global North is the death knell of Africa. It drives a kind of geopolitical heavy-handedness that gives Western countries far more say in local African politics than they should have. Aid will continue to keep Africa down, the thinking goes, because it lets African leaders off the hook for their failure to prioritize the welfare of their people since they can always rely on aid to do it for them.

Whose Security Problem?

Another major challenge of mutual concern for the Global North and South is increasing levels of violence, whether political or criminal. Examples range from the threats of al-Shabab on the East African seaboard; Boko Haram in northern Nigeria; the multitudes of Islamic militants in the Sahel; and the civil wars in South Sudan, Central African Republic, Democratic Republic of Congo, and Sudan.

There is a superficial view, common both within African and U.S. policymaking circles, that these sources of insecurity equally affect both Africa and the United States — in terms of diminished economic growth for Africa, and in terms of potential military casualties, wasted business potential, and loss of access to raw materials for the United States — and that they should come to an agreement about how to tackle them.

This is the wrong approach to the question of violence in Africa. Violence in Africa is an African responsibility. Only an African solution will make sense. Yes, some of these wars are rooted in a history not entirely of African making, but the truth now is that Africans are the ones getting killed in these conflicts, by Africans. It is the livelihoods of Africans that will continue to suffer.

Does anyone in Africa genuinely believe that involving the United States in the search for a solution to these wars is not going to create further problems? Or is it more truthful to say that African governments request and accept U.S. offers for help mainly because of funds and equipment? Especially since such monetary support and military tools often find their way into private hands.

Any U.S.-Africa security cooperation should not be in the usual form of treating the symptoms, but instead should enable African countries to tackle the foundations of violence, which include the exclusion of the huge number of young males from the gains of economic growth. The local drivers of violence are the core reason why so many young people are drawn into radical violent movements and militias in the first place, and military solutions are the kind of Band-Aid approach that has earned the Western world enemies among these radical youth, who see the U.S. government's involvement as an extension of local autocratic regimes that exclude them.

These issues are rooted in the success of market economies in the West, on one hand, and the ravages of protectionism imposed on the developing world, on the other. Trade, economic cooperation, and free markets tend to be better options than development aid, but are too often disrupted. Aid would not be needed to the levels where it stands today if African products were given access to Western markets, as that would encourage production, provide employment for more youth and increase Africa's purchasing power to consume more Western goods, indeed a win-win situation. This is as much Africa's problem to solve as it is the West's. African countries need to begin by freeing up intra-continental space for trade before they can expect the West to grant them space in global markets.

Jok Madut Jok is a senior researcher with The Sudd Institute, a public policy research center based in Juba, South Sudan.