President Barack Obama,
whose election in 2008 as the first black American
president sparked huge expectations in Africa, will at
last hold a summit next week for the continent’s
leaders.
Invitations were sent to 50 heads of state and
government for talks that seem designed as a
counterweight to China’s decade-long surge in
investment and trade with Africa.
American officials said all the countries invited to
send delegations will do so, most of them headed by
presidents but some by vice presidents, prime
ministers or foreign ministers.
Notable absentees will include Egypt’s President
Abdel Fattah al-Sisi and Morocco’s King Mohammed
VI — who will send envoys — but sub-Saharan Africa
will be well represented.
Only four presidents were excluded: Zimbabwe’s
Robert Mugabe, Sudan’s Omar al-Bashir, Eritrea’s
Issaias Afeworki and the Central African Republic’s
transitional leader Catherine Samba Panza.
But, even if Obama’s gathering marks the greatest
ever concentration of African leadership in
Washington, it is not clear what kinds of results can
be expected from the three-day summit.
Obama’s foreign policy was first marked by a pivot to
Asia and a failed attempt to “reset” relations with
Russia, and he did not make Africa a priority in his
first term.
The agenda will certainly include discussion on
current threats facing the continent — kidnappings
and killings by Islamist group Boko Haram in Nigeria,
civil war in South Sudan and deadly attacks by the
Somalia militant group Shebab in Kenya.
And the outbreak of the Ebola virus in West Africa
could find itself at the center of talks.
The leaders of Sierra Leone and Liberia have canceled
their summit trips to Washington over the epidemic,
which was first declared at the beginning of the year
in Guinea and has so far claimed more than 725
lives.
The hemorrhagic fever, often fatal, could spread “like
a forest fire,” US health authorities warned this week.
The US-Africa summit will also have a strong
economic aspect, with a program focused on
opportunities for the continent where 60 percent of
the population is under 35 and where growth rates
are higher than anywhere else in the world.
Currently, the United States is third among Africa’s
major trading partners, far behind longtime number
one the European Union, and raw material-hungry
China.
“I see Africa as the world’s next major economic
success story, and the United States wants to be a
partner in that success,” Obama said last year during
his first presidential trip to the continent, with stops
in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.
But his national security advisor, Susan Rice,
acknowledged Wednesday that Americans need to
change their “outdated mindset” of the continent.
“Too many Americans still only see conflict, disease
and poverty, and not the extraordinarily diverse
Africa, brimming with innovation,” Rice said, adding
“the United States can do more to compete to be a
full partner in Africa’s success.”
- Packed agenda -
Some analysts see the Washington summit as a
response to Beijing’s campaign of African investment
and trade over the last decade.
“It can’t help but be seen that way, because we have
never done this before, and the Chinese have,” said
Deborah Brautigam, who directs the China Africa
Research Initiative at Johns Hopkins University.
Brautigam wondered, however, whether the United
States had done enough to prepare ahead of the
summit.
“When the Chinese organized a similar event” in
2006, “they had been working for about six years,”
she noted.
Among economic issues to be discussed will be the
possible extension beyond 2015 of the African
Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, which
provides preferential market access for some
products from African countries deemed to be
democratic and following good economic governance.
Likewise, Obama’s “Power Africa” initiative,
leverages loan guarantees and private sector finance
and aims to double access to electricity in sub-
Saharan Africa.
After a first day, Monday, dedicated to health
challenges and climate change, a business forum on
Tuesday will gather leaders from both the public and
private sector — including former US president Bill
Clinton.
The third and final day will be for political discussions
on peace and regional stability.
There are no bilateral meetings planned between
Obama and any of his African counterparts but a
huge White House gala dinner is on the agenda for
Tuesday evening.
Peter Pham, director of the Africa Center at the
Atlantic Council, said this summit will be important
for relations between Obama and the continent
where his father was born.
But he cautioned that African expectations for
Obama’s presidency started out “unreasonably
high.”
“The fact is nothing in President Obama’s history
other than the identity of his father, nothing in his
personal history or his political history, would point
to the expectations that were put on his shoulders,”
he said.
“Others read into it what they wanted to read into it.”
