Cfr - Bh Intro

Introduction Africa has risen steadily in importance to the United States in recent years. Traditionally, Africa has been thought of primarily as an object of humanitarian concern. That perception has been highlighted by popular figures, such as Bono, Bob Geldof, George Clooney, and others, focusing public attention on Africa’s poverty, conflicts, and major diseases. Worldwide concerts such as Live 8 in July 2005 focused on these themes and urged leaders of the industrialized world to devote more aid, debt relief, and opening of trade to assist Africa. The leaders of the G8 responded that year, pledging to double aid to Africa to $50 billion annually by 2010 and eliminating the debt of some of Africa’s poorest countries. Africa has further captured worldwide attention because of the conflict in Darfur, Sudan. Because the United States has judged the Sudanese government’s campaign in the region to be genocide, the conflict has taken on enormous moral importance. Unfortunately, despite many UN Security Council resolutions, special envoys, and various peace agreements, not to mention the experience in Rwanda, the violence continues and has even worsened. But Africa has other reasons, beyond these critical humanitarian issues, to command America’s attention. Africa is currently the scene of major competition for access to its natural resources. China, India, Malaysia, South Korea, Brazil, and other countries with rapidly growing economies are turning to Africa for oil, minerals, timber, and other resources. China in particular has led in this competition with significant amounts of aid along with financial backing for hundreds of Chinese companies to invest in Africa. China’s aid for infrastructure projects, long ignored by the United States and other Western aid programs, and its readiness to set aside issues of governance, human rights, and economic transparency—issues of growing importance to the West—has made it a formidable competitor for both influence and lucrative contracts on the continent. [ix] Copyrighted material

Introduction This new competition comes at a time when Africa’s oil is becoming more important to the United States. Currently, 15 percent of U.S. oil imports come from Africa, as much as from the Middle East. Moreover, Africa is poised to double its output over the coming decade and potentially could provide as much as 25 percent of U.S. imports. African capacity to export natural gas is also growing rapidly, with American and British companies making billions of dollars in investments in liquefied natural gas (LNG) plants along the Gulf of Guinea. Yet nearly all of Africa’s oil reserves are in countries experiencing violence or instability, and in some cases serious violations of human rights. As the United States is discovering in the Middle East and Latin America, it is impossible to count on a continuing supply of oil from Africa without attention to the quality of governance, the degree that indigenous populations are benefiting from oil, and long-term stability. Africa’s importance is also growing in trade negotiations. With 40 of the World Trade Organization’s 185 members, Africa is demanding significant reduction of U.S. and European agricultural subsidies and tariffs in return for agreement on a new round of worldwide trade improvements. Teaming up with India, Brazil, and other third world countries, Africa has essentially brought the negotiations of the so-called Doha Round to a standstill pending movement on these issues. Africa is also rising in importance in the war on terror. AlQaeda terrorists bombed the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998 and attacked Israeli facilities in Kenya in 2001. These acts revealed an extensive network of terrorist cells along the east African seaboard. The threat became apparent once again when an Islamic movement captured control of Somalia’s capital, Mogadishu, in 2006 and seemed headed toward confrontation with America’s ally, Ethiopia, and to be taking steps hostile to American objectives, e.g., protecting terrorists known to be associated with the 1998 embassy bombings. In a lightning military move in December 2006, Ethiopia displaced the Islamists from Mogadishu and drove the leadership out of the country or into hiding. But the continuing weak government, [x] Copyrighted material

Introduction clan warfare, and humanitarian disasters make Somalia vulnerable to future infiltration and sources of trouble for the United States. Elsewhere on the continent, the United States has initiated a training and intelligence-gathering program throughout northwest Africa, called the Trans Sahara Counter Terrorism Initiative, and sought to jump-start regional security efforts in the oil-rich Gulf of Guinea. In 2008, the United States will establish a single Africa Command to coordinate and amplify these programs. Finally, Africa is at the center of worldwide concerns over global health. Africa is the epicenter of the AIDS pandemic, with 28 million of the 40 million worldwide infected with HIV. Africa suffers the most deaths from malaria, one million per year. And most recently, Africa has been recognized as one of the most vulnerable sources for the potential spread of avian flu, because of weak infrastructure, monitoring capacity, and control mechanisms. Led by the United States, annual worldwide expenditures on AIDS have risen from less than $1 billion in 2000 to $8 billion in 2006, and the United States has begun a major malaria initiative. But estimates are that as much as $22 billion will be needed annually in the next few years for AIDS alone. Whether these costs can be met, or met without subtracting from other forms of aid for education, agriculture, etc., is very uncertain. Meanwhile, investments in health and agricultural infrastructure for control of a potential avian flu pandemic are only on the drawing board. Africa is well aware of both its challenges and potential. In recent years African countries have taken several steps to strengthen electoral democracy, economic policies, good governance, and the reduction of conflict. Nearly two-thirds of African governments today are elected, and the African Union (AU)—the continent’s political body—will not seat a government that comes to power through nonconstitutional means. Under a program called the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD), Africa has set forth principles of governance, human rights, and economic management and instituted a peer review mechanism to help hold governments to these principles. With all the rightful attention to the ongoing violence in Darfur and the recent civil war in Congo, many international observers have not focused on the significant [xi] Copyrighted material

Introduction decline of conflict on the continent. Civil wars in Angola, Mozambique, Liberia, and Sierra Leone have been brought to a close, often with active African leadership in the negotiations and the contribution of peacekeepers. A near repeat of the Rwanda-type genocide in neighboring Burundi has been averted by a strong African diplomatic initiative that helped shape an elected national unity government and by the African Union providing a timely presence of peacekeepers. Even in Darfur the AU has so far provided the only peacekeepers, though well below the numbers and capabilities needed to control the situation. Africa’s democratic trend is nevertheless fragile. In Uganda, President Yoweri Museveni spurned international pleas and obtained parliamentary approval to run and be elected yet again after twenty years in power. In Ethiopia, elections in 2005 led to charges of rigging, violence, and the jailing of leading opposition politicians. In Zimbabwe, President Robert Mugabe continues to rule autocratically, cracking down on dissent, the media, judges, and even religious leaders while the once-promising economy plunges into ruin. Nigeria may be the bellwether of Africa’s democratic future. Nigeria is Africa’s most populous nation, with as many as 130 million people. Nigeria’s president over the past eight years, Olusegun Obasanjo, has been a leader in the formation of NEPAD and personally led the return to civilian rule in Nigeria with his election in 1999. In the spring of 2007, Nigeria faced a major milestone. After decades of largely military rule and two terms of Obasanjo’s elected presidency, Nigeria for the first time had the opportunity to experience a democratic transfer of power from one civilian administration to another. But the election was deeply flawed through poor preparation, extensive legal battles over who could be on the ballot, violence, and considerable ballot stuffing and other irregularities. The newly elected president, Umaru Yar’Adua, will be seriously challenged to build credibility and the capacity to govern in the wake of the deep disillusionment and disputes about the electoral process. Much of Africa’s future support for democracy will depend on the outcome of events in Nigeria. [xii] Copyrighted material

Introduction At the center of all Africa’s issues and challenges lies the persistence of poverty. Africa is by far the poorest continent, poorer even than other developing regions, and marginal in the global trading system. Poverty adds to the potential for conflict, the vulnerability to terrorist influence, the pressures of illegal migration, the spread of disease, and it constitutes a drain on worldwide aid resources. Thus, the humanitarian problems return to center stage in contemplating U.S. policy. But they cannot be treated as objects of charity, nor be satisfied with emergency aid for relief and postconflict emergencies, which have comprised much of America’s recent increases in assistance. The growing importance of Africa, in so many ways, demands a much more focused, long-term, and carefully directed program of economic assistance and trade reform. The Bush administration has begun in that direction with the Millennium Challenge Account, and Congress has contributed with the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which opens the U.S. market to African exports. But much more needs to be done. The United States also lacks the personnel to develop and manage a truly comprehensive policy toward Africa, one that would address the full panoply of issues described above. As Congressman Frank Wolf (R-VA) recently said, ‘‘the bench is thin’’ when it comes to the State Department dealing with crises in Sudan, Somalia, and elsewhere. It is all the more shorthanded for developing long-term policies addressing oil-producing states or programmatic support for democracy. Only when Africa is recognized for the growing importance it has for America will these shortcomings be overcome. That is the theme and purpose of this publication. The Council on Foreign Relations has had a strong program on Africa for several years. In 2003, it established the Ralph Bunche Chair on Africa Policy Studies, the first endowed Africa policy chair of any think tank in the United States. The holder of the chair has organized regular reviews of current developments in Africa, directed numerous studies, and published many articles and reports. In addition, the Council maintains on its website, CFR.org, a regular stream of updates and analyses on African issues. This book offers a selection of those reports and publica[xiii] Copyrighted material

Introduction tions, designed to provide a picture of the broad range of African issues of importance to the United States and some recommendations for U.S. policy. If the book helps generate greater attention and understanding of Africa by both the public and policymakers, it will have served its purpose. Princeton N. Lyman

[xiv] Copyrighted material