Foreign Policy In Focus Special Report: U.S. and Africa: Starting Point for a New Policy Framework

Special Report
United States and Africa:
Starting Points for a New Policy Framework

What Road to Democracy

In contrast to the serious gap between Washington discourse and African public opinion about the best road to economic progress, there is much more consensus on the desirability of fundamental political rights, including democracy, the rule of law, human rights, citizen participation, a free press, and accountable governments with minimal corruption. In the eloquent words of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan’s 1997 address to the Organization of African Unity (OAU):

As Annan stressed, post-colonial governments in Africa, irrespective of ideology or proclaimed goals, have rarely lived up to these goals. Many of the worst offenders survived by serving their cold war patrons, paying lip service to one global ideology or another while pursuing their agendas of control and aggrandizement. As President Clinton cautiously acknowledged during his trip, much to the annoyance of officials of previous administrations who argued that the U.S. had no need to apologize, “very often we dealt with countries in Africa based more on how they stood in the struggle between the United States and the Soviet Union than how they stood in the struggle for their own people’s aspirations.”

The U.S. State Department human rights report has become valuable for holding governments accountable, complementing the efforts of local human rights groups and established multilateral organizations.

Remembering the decades-long support for military dictator Mobutu Sese Seko in the former Zaire, U.S. collaboration with the apartheid regime, and numerous other cases, most of those familiar with African history will find the apology enormously understated. But it did serve to indicate that the stated goals in Washington and those among African democracy advocates are much more compatible today than during the cold war period. There is a high degree of overlap of statements of desirable objectives, whether they come from U.S. policymakers, international conferences, or prodemocracy groups in particular African countries. The congressionally mandated annual U.S. State Department human rights report, though not entirely free of bias in its approach to different countries, has become a valuable resource for holding governments accountable, complementing the efforts of local human rights groups and established multilateral organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

The president’s 1998 trip, however, highlighted abundant inconsistencies in Washington’s advocacy of democratic political goals. The currents of opinion within the administration that saw human rights in practice as dirty words to be avoided, whether out of traditional diplomatic expediency or in the belief that prioritizing economic advance would automatically bring progress in other areas, remained highly influential. Calls for Clinton to speak out and act clearly for democracy in Africa’s most populous country—Nigeria—fell on deaf ears, for example, and the celebration of Africa’s “new leaders” in South Africa, Uganda (where political parties are banned), and elsewhere eclipsed the need to advance democracy on multiple fronts.

Particularly troubling are the assumptions that economic progress (as defined by market-friendly policies and macroeconomic growth) is automatically correlated with political freedom or that it should take priority when the two clash. In fact, imposition of strict structural adjustment policies is likely to undermine a democratic leader’s popular base by imposing immediate burdens, while supposed benefits are often postponed indefinitely or awarded to a privileged elite. The road toward greater democracy is not always obvious and is certainly not the same in different countries. The degree of democracy, as measured by participation and open debate, is not necessarily matched with the number of political parties. But the tendency of many U.S. officials to downplay democratic failings among favorite governments and leaders as long as their economic policies please Washington repeatedly blurs the clarity of the prodemocracy message.

Figure 9
Population Figures (millions of people)
.	1950	1998	2050	.
World Total	2,521	5,901	8,909	.
Northern America	172	305	392	.
Africa	221	749	1,766	.
Source: United Nations Population Division, World Population Prospects: The 1998 Revision, forthcoming.

This double-standard is particularly obvious, of course, in the case of countries with major resources of interest to Washington. Over the years since the military regime canceled Nigeria’s 1993 election, the United States has joined others around the world in criticizing the lack of democracy in Nigeria. But although the Clinton administration protested with a few concrete steps—stopping Nigerian airline flights and denying visas to top military leaders—the surging flow of money sent a different message: U.S. investments in Nigeria, predominantly in the oil sector, grew from around $4 billion to as much as $7 billion in the five years from 1992 to 1997, and bilateral trade increased from $4.9 billion in 1994 to $6.7 billion in 1996.²⁰

While policy reviews within the Clinton administration dragged on, Washington officials were dispatched to oppose citizen campaigns to enact state and local sanctions against Nigeria. And when President Clinton signaled in Cape Town that it might be acceptable for the dictator Sani Abacha to run as a civilian candidate, administration officials scrambled to explain the contradiction with earlier State Department assertions that the U.S. would stand firm against military rule in civilian clothing.

Abacha’s death in June 1998 and the subsequent death in prison of Moshood Abiola, winner of the 1993 presidential election and a focal point of pro-democracy proponents, altered the political situation in Nigeria. Opponents of the military regime differed regarding how much trust to place in Abacha’s successor, General Abdusalam Abubakar, who released some political prisoners and promised a return to civilian rule in 1999. When President-elect Olusegun Obasanjo assumed authority in place of the military regime in June 1999, many predicted that the transition to “civilian rule” in Nigeria was now complete. But the basic issues related to promoting broad-based and lasting democracy in Nigeria continue to fester. Particularly explosive are the failures to address regional and ethnic inequalities, the division of powers between the federal government and other units, and the distribution of oil wealth, currently concentrated in the country’s delta region. Both the Nigerian military government and international oil companies that exploit the region’s wealth (Shell, Mobil, Chevron, and others) are being challenged as never before. Questions raised about the fairness of the election—as well as President Obasanjo’s military background and his apparent initial assumption that input from prodemocracy, human rights, and other grassroots groups is no longer necessary—suggest that durable solutions may be long in coming. The temptation to rely primarily on repression rather than dialogue is still a major threat.

One common policy element is Washington’s priority on stability and economic cooperation; another is its flexibility regarding the compliance of African regimes with human rights and democratic standards.

Although the ambivalence of U.S. policy regarding Nigeria rests above all on the priority given to economic interests, Washington’s rhetoric about “new leaders” derives partly from trying to find simple slogans to justify and orient policy and partly from focusing on the leadership level rather than on more fundamental institutional change. While the success story of Nelson Mandela’s leadership in South Africa was matched by high-level attention to bilateral relations, U.S. policymakers at middle levels were and are divided on how precisely to deal with democratic issues in countries as diverse as Uganda, Ethiopia, and Eritrea, not to mention those with deep internal conflicts such as Rwanda and Congo (Kinshasa). One common policy element is Washington’s priority on stability and economic cooperation; another is its flexibility regarding the compliance of African regimes with human rights and democratic standards.

Critics of this framework are convincing when they say that standards of human rights should be applied across the board. They are less convincing, however, in laying out strategies for ensuring that such rights are implemented in practice. Expedient diplomatic silence on major abuses is not justifiable. Public exposure of those abuses, by both domestic and international agencies, is needed. But it is insufficient. Regarding further action, no “one-size-fits-all” approach will work, whether it be sanctions, aid conditionality, high-profile diplomatic statements, financial support for prodemocracy groups, or “quiet diplomacy.”