Opinion
The Summit to be held december 13-15 in Washington dodges the real issues at stake…
By Adama Gaye
JOE Biden, the US President, may be looking at Africa with rosy glasses.
Following blindly his seemingly over-optimistic, almost Panglossian, Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, he is taking a risky stance by believing that nothing in this world can be done without Africa being one of the central stakeholders.
Let’s look at the evidence: it is rather bleak, and any honest discussion on Africa, based on facts and figures, the hard reality, will come to a harsh conclusion.
Indeed, except for Morrocco’s dazzling prowesses at the current Soccer World cup where it has reached the semi-final stages, giving the continent the first ever such slot since the inception decades ago of the popular competition, it is hardly impossible to find a single, viable, reason to justify America’s day-dreaming narrative on it.
To be just, the perception emanating from The White House and Foggy-Bottom, respectively seats of the US Presidency and State Department, is not shared in any serious African circles.
Worst, by allowing a US Judge to recently drop the case of the murdered Saudi, Us-based, Journalist, Jamal Kashoggi in the hands of Saudi operatives, the Biden Administration has sent a damaging image of itself across the spines of all those in Africa who naively expected it to display a value-based leadership, grounded on democratic norms, human-rights and rule of Law, including accountability in the management of countries in the developing world.
For most Africans who grew pissed off by the insulting casting of their nations as “s.holes”, by Donald Trump, the predecessor of Biden, the minimum that the current Administration could have done to mend fences was to start a new relationship based not on massaging their egos but on a candid assessement of what should forge it.
All hopes are lost with the cynical second burrial of Kashoggi by the USA. That showed it doesn’t offer a new political model, as an impetus, to peoples in Africa long yearning for an alternative to the autocratic rulership stamping their’s in vast lands from Asia to Africa. In short, the question is whether Joe Biden has given up on the softer, democratic, blueprint his election seemed to herald, two-years ago?
Many in our continent are dismayed by the appeasement deployed by America, under his weak leadership or lack of authority, towards the reckless Saudi Prince, Mohamed Bin Salman, as a signal that such a condescendence would only means that African autocrats should not be worried about the utterances, on rule of law, fight against corruption and other platitudes, coming out of the Oval Office.
Even the last-minute decision by his Administration to block the accounts of the deposed Guinean (Conakry) President, Alpha Conde, as a reprisal of his killings of scores of his compatriots before the military took over from him, last year, appears just as a ploy to act as “Medecin-après-la mort!” (doctor after death!).
By convening a US-Africa leaders Summit, President Biden is trying to put meat on Blinken’s lofty statements during his two visits to the continent since his appointment to lead what was originally believed to be a new diplomatic era in America’s ties with a once considered “dark” and even “hopeless” continent, according to the damning depiction by the London-based Economist Magazine.
Blinken repeated ad nauseam that Africa is the land of the future. “Nothing can be done without including it”, so he said, adding: “we should be looking at what we can do with Africa but not for it”.
The issue is that by adopting that position America seems to project an image of humility, to co-create its cooperation with the continent, but the truth is that in the process it drops its right to inventory on a continent where never before, as is today, democratic regression is so deep, money, drug and human traffickings are on the rise, and killings of citizens, not just on lingering internecine wars, have been so casual just to hold nations under the knees of brutal leaders now common throughout the continent.
No need to pinpoint my country, Senegal, where journalists are randomly arrested to silence them, security forces and ordinary citizens ssassinated while the country’s natural resources are politically privatized.
From South Africa, where a beleaguered President, Cyril Ramaphosa, is accused of corruption, to the North Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) stricken by a conflict fuelled by the bellicist Rwanda, to Ethiopia, still torn apart, and other regions like the Sahel and Somalia, under Jihadist militias, the reality is the same: Africa is backsling!
Unemployment, in a context of economic quasi-total degradation, is widespread, especially among the youths. Inflation is choking countries like Ghana, once seen as rising stars. Geopolitically African leaders, in their vast majority, are throwing away term-limits. Plotting for never-ending political mandates, on the model of autocratic mentors like Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping; has become the order of the day to the point when Africans are left with a stark alternative: military or civilian coups are disrupting constitutionnal rule…
It is therefore imperative to call off the jokes of a new Africa surrounding the US-Africa Summit.
To be honest, it is poised to be a big joke. After his failed summit on Democracy, last year, Joe Biden should have been wiser. He is not. He doesn’t seem to realize that what Africa wants is not a celebratory discourse nor promises of multi-billion dollars of investments that would only sustain the autocrats in power, entrenching them.
In this light, one can’t dodge a disturbing question: has he fallen prey to those lobbyists and top executives in and outside his Administration who once worked for rogue African leaders, during their times in the wilderness?
In whose interest is this summit? As they dream of a new day, most African people are aware that there is no free lunch in inter-States relations. Realistics, they ask for the relationship where America and their countries are aligned around universal objectives of good governance and human rights.
That is the basis of the dreams of the current generation of Africans, without complex, as displayed on the World Cup pitches by the Morroccans.
The gathering in Washington DC will only confirm a trend known by all exegetes of US-Africa, this forgotten other TransAtlantic axis: America condones African autocrats and insults African true actors of change who are not impressed by this Jamboree where the US President, no longer the most important person on earth, weak and shunned, as shown by the refusal of rogue leaders like Mohammed Bin Salman, to increase his country’s oil output as requested by Biden, rather bowing to the prodding of Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Bin Salman’s royal treatment last week of China’s Xi Jinping, on a State visit, indicates further to African leaders, who now can read the internet; that America’s adoption of a rethoric dropping the political conditionnalities that once were its main value proposition.
The 600 billion dollars investments promised ny Biden to Africa, more words than action, won’t change that reality. America is losing respect by hobnobing with African leaders that have lost credibility at home. Biden will find himself being a collateral victim once the folklore of his Summit is over.
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Adama Gaye, a former Fellow US-Foreign Policymaking Program, University of Maryland, College Park, is a journalist from Senegal living in exile after being illegally detained in his country. Among his books, are: Tomorrow, The New Africa and Hostage of A State, published at Editions L’Harmattan, Paris.
A.I
Tags: Adama Gaye Anthony Blinken Joe Biden
