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

Africa's "Second Independence"

Like the rest of the world, African countries are struggling to find direction in the post-cold war era. Yet debates about the structure of African societies and states are less fundamentally related to the aftermath of that East-West conflict than to the legacies of the colonial era and the failures of the first post-colonial generation. Africa is, of course, caught up in the worldwide trend toward globalization, but its niche is still largely shaped by its particular history of slavery, colonialism, and racism.

From the 15th into the 19th century, Africa’s primary link with the world was through the export of slaves. In the 19th and 20th centuries, export of raw materials became the dominant link. This role as commodity supplier—whether of high-valued ivory, gold, diamonds, and oil or of precariously priced crops such as coffee and cocoa —largely excluded Africa from the more dynamic sectors of manufacturing, financial services, and information technology.

Political independence beginning in the 1960s did not change this fundamental reality. Today Africa’s primary exports remain unprocessed agricultural products and, for a handful of countries, minerals and oil. Even South Africa’s relatively developed economy is extremely vulnerable to the fluctuating price of gold. And though Ghana, one of the World Bank’s “success stories,” increased its income from nontraditional commodities to 18% of total export earnings by 1996, most export revenue still came from cocoa (32%) and gold (45%). Countries that depend almost exclusively on agricultural exports, such as Rwanda and Burundi, are most vulnerable. Oil producers, such as Nigeria and Angola, may be better off in comparison, but they endure boom and bust cycles as the world oil price shifts.

Africa’s first post-independence generation—broadly speaking, from the 1960s to the end of political apartheid in South Africa in 1994—made significant advances. Most notably, the newly independent states educated far more of their children than preceding colonial regimes, and many made impressive strides in delivery of basic health care and potable water, expansion of infrastructure, and industrial production for the domestic market. Africa’s independence struggles also gave impetus to the civil rights movement in the United States, while African culture gained new prominence on the world scene. African states formed significant voting blocs in the United Nations and other international organizations, and African professionals excelled in their fields both at home and abroad.

This generation’s failings were also considerable and painful—repressive, ineffective, and corrupt bureaucracies, military dictatorships, and one-party states; deep indebtedness to international institutions and banks; a stifling of grassroots initiatives, public debate, and other civil liberties. These failings were compounded by an international system that fostered ill-conceived, nonfunctional, and costly development projects, heavy financial borrowing, and cold war-linked civil wars, which left newly independent countries with little economic cushion or political leeway for policy errors.

Figure 2
U.S. Aid to Sub-Saharan Africa, 1999 - 2000 (millions of $U.S.)
Program	FY 1999 (actual)	FY 2000 (requested)
Development Fund for Africa	460.1	512.6
Child Survival and Disease Programs	251.2	232.4
Economic Support Fund*	98.2	73.0
African Development Foundation	11.1	14.4
Peace Corps	54.6	56.0
Voluntary Peacekeeping Operations	19.0	28.0
International Military Education and Training	8.1	8.5
Foreign Military Financing	10.0	10.0
Contributions to International Peacekeeping	29.2	57.2
African Development Bank	.	5.1
African Development Fund	128.0	127.0
Non-food Aid Total	1069.5	1124.2
Food Aid	222.4	134.4
Total	1,293.9	1,258.6
* ESF increased dramatically in 1999 (up from $26 million in 1998) because of a supplemental appropriation in response to bombings of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.
Source: Raymond W. Copson, "Africa: U.S. Foreign Assistance Issues," CRS Issue Brief for Congress, August 19, 1999, posted at: http://www.cnie.org/nle/econ-51.html.

Kofi Annan of Ghana, the first United Nations Secretary-General from sub-Saharan Africa, divides this era into two “waves:” the first, during the 1960s and 1970s, was characterized by post-colonial enthusiasm and economic advance; the second, running from the 1980s to the early 1990s was “too often marked by civil wars, the tyranny of military rule, and economic stagnation.”³ Autocratic leaders, whatever their proclaimed political ideology, turned to police state repression and cold war patrons to stay in power. The worst perpetrated enormous human rights abuses. Even the best failed to deliver on the hopes of independence regarding political liberties, social services, and economic improvement. Thus, much of the economic advance of the 1970s was rolled back in the 1980s and early 1990s as a result both of internal failure and a tougher world economic climate, including the oil crises in the 1970s, a steady fall in world prices for Africa’s leading agricultural exports, and the linking of international assistance to draconian structural adjustment policies (SAPs).

Often not acknowledged is the central role the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and various Western bilateral aid agencies—including the Agency for International Development (AID)—played in undermining efforts by the post-independence generation of Africans to improve basic social services. Beginning in the early to mid-1980s, the World Bank, the IMF, and the U.S. began preconditioning aid and loans to many African countries on acceptance of structural adjustment policies, which included slashing government spending. For example, the 1975 Tanzanian budget allocations for education (14%) and health (7%) were cut to just over 5% each in 1996.⁴ As a result, literacy in Tanzania—which had climbed from a low 15% at independence in 1961 to an impressive 91% by 1985, the year before SAPs were introduced—had fallen to 64% by the mid-1990s. “If you ask governments to cut down expenditure, it’s almost an authorization that they cut on health and education, and where education is not for everyone, it is left for the privileged,” former Tanzanian President Julius Nyerere told the World Health Organization in outlining the impact of structural adjustment policies.⁵

Yet, at the turn of the millennium, Africa is clearly entering a new political phase, variously referred to as a “second independence struggle,” a “third wave” of change, or, as popularized by South Africa’s then Deputy President (and in June 1999, President) Thabo Mbeki, an “African Renaissance.” Whatever the terminology, a common theme throughout the continent today is that a critical mass of Africans—including government officials, professionals, business owners, academics, journalists, religious leaders, trade unionists, and small farmers, as well as human rights, women’s movement, and environmental activists—are organizing with new dynamism, new demands, and new expectations. The current generation, which has come of age in the post-cold war, post-apartheid era, is determined to fulfill the promises of widely shared economic progress, democratic rights for all, and security that will enable ordinary people around the continent to pursue their own dreams in peace. Although enormous obstacles remain, Africa has entered a new stage of social transformation.

The primary dynamic in Africa is internal. It should be no surprise that the transformation of African national and state structures, still largely derived from colonial models, remains unfinished. To cite only one reason among many, it is little more than one generation since the first large wave of young children entered the school systems so rapidly expanded after independence. At Tanzania’s independence in 1961, for example, 85% of adults were illiterate, and less than half the country’s children were in school. Although some countries were better off—Nigeria and Ghana, in particular, had long histories of educational development at home and study abroad—others were even further behind. At Mozambique’s independence in 1975, 93% were illiterate, and less than a third of primary-age children were in school. In their first decades of independence, almost all African countries rapidly expanded primary and secondary education and founded new universities. The sheer number of years it takes for a significant number of students to advance from primary school through professional education and experience partly explains why the 1990s began seeing so large a wave of people with the skills and contacts to speak out at home and abroad on the issues facing the African continent.

Rarely do U.S. officials acknowledge that the policy package they advocate is criticized by large sectors of African public opinion.

Another structural reason for this upsurge is that the capacity to suppress such internal forces decreased as states lost their cold war patronage. And there are other factors, some unique to particular countries or regions, others due to aspects of the changing international environment. What is certain is that there is a new dynamic. Its outcome—for good or evil—is not so certain. The transformation needed for new voices and social forces to make a real impact will not be easy, and it will be uneven. Its chances will depend, above all, on African initiatives, not only by African governments but by groups and individuals in African countries on both national and local levels.

But the chances of success also depend in large part on whether African realities and priorities are recognized in decisionmaking arenas in multinational and rich-country institutions. There are many initiatives, on and off the continent, to promote African demands for human rights, social justice, peace, and economic development leading to sustainable and equitable improvement in the quality of African life. These initiatives, however, are not yet coherent enough or powerful enough to break through the old patterns of how the outside world deals with Africa. Among the common obstacles they face is the pervasiveness of simplistic stereotypes and one-size-fits-all remedies from outside the continent. One indispensable requirement for constructive outside involvement with Africa is greater sensitivity to the diversity and complexity of African realities.

Misleading perceptions affect policymakers and shape public opinion. And they include not only long-established negative stereotypes about Africa but also simplistic presentations of new trends. The importance of leadership is undeniable, yet the desire to tout success stories—and to identify them with particular leaders, such as those visited by President Clinton in 1998—can easily mask wider issues. In Addis Ababa in December 1997, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright praised Africa’s “new leaders” who, she said, “share a common vision of empowerment—for all their citizens, for their nations, and for their continent.” The administration provided no comprehensive list of the “new leaders,” and interactions by Secretary Albright and President Clinton grouped a very diverse array, from Nelson Mandela in South Africa to Laurent Kabila in the Congo (Kinshasa) to the leaders of Senegal, Ghana, Rwanda, Uganda, Botswana, Ethiopia, Zimbabwe, and others. To place hope for the future—and to base policy projections—on a new set of rulers is to set oneself up for quick disappointment, when the new leaders also turn out to have feet of clay and prove to be less homogeneous than initially portrayed. The future depends on institutional change at many levels, not just on leaders.

Another dangerous half-truth pursuit is to enshrine open markets as a fundamentalist dogma and to then impose rigid formulas for open economies and macroeconomic adjustment to the neglect of fundamental requirements for development. U.S. policy statements commonly cite the principal goal of “integrating Africa into the world economy” and often praise nations that “adopt sound macroeconomic policies and make the transition to free market economies.”⁶ Rarely, if ever, do U.S. officials acknowledge that the policy package they advocate is sharply criticized by large sectors of African public opinion (and by many government leaders as well, when they feel free to speak back to their “donors”). Achieving economic growth is indeed indispensable for achieving other goals, and it does require greater competitiveness and freedom from inefficient or corrupt bureaucratic restrictions. But growth will be neither sustainable nor fair unless it: 1) is directed toward job creation and poverty reduction, 2) produces for domestic and regional consumers and not only for international markets, 3) is undergirded by public investment in health and education, and 4) is protected from abuse of worker rights and the environment. This is why both the World Bank and the United Nations Development Program now agree that poverty-reducing growth, not just “growth,” must be clearly defined as an objective.⁷

Meanwhile, market integration—without other structural changes—leaves Africa still dependent on a small number of export commodities, deeply in debt, and capable of attracting only a small fraction of world investment capital. In 1997, excluding South Africa, the entire continent only attracted $4.7 billion in global capital, a mere 3% of that year’s direct investment in developing countries.⁸ If policy is based on the assumption that wide-open markets will automatically produce other desired results, the most likely outcome is that the promised benefits will accrue only to a favored few. Some countries and some sectors may advance, but at the price of continued growth of poverty along with greater inequality within and between African countries.

For its 40th anniversary conference in April 1998, the Economic Commission for Africa chose the theme “African Women and Economic Development: Investing in Our Future.”⁹ The choice reflected the growing recognition that progress for Africa depends on the advance of women in all spheres of life. Africa’s women face particularly great obstacles. Female adult literacy rates are 50% or less in twenty-nine African countries; only the southern Africa region reaches the global developing country average of 61%. Maternal mortality rates for sub-Saharan Africa averaged 980 per 100,000 live births in 1990, as compared with 12 for the U.S. and 470 for all developing countries.¹⁰

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), female education levels are closely correlated with improved family health and reduced infant mortality. In addition, a WHO study found that “women with even a few years of schooling have more self confidence, are better able to assume responsibility, and often enjoy a higher status in the family and community, giving them a greater voice in making decisions.”¹¹ Addressing gender disparities is thus not only an imperative in its own right, it is essential for Africa’s economic and political advancement.

A prerequisite for Africa’s advance on multiple fronts is participation from a wide range of sectors in developing goals and initiatives, implementing them, and monitoring results. A series of global, continent-wide, and regional conferences in the 1990s—sponsored by United Nations agencies, the Economic Commission for Africa, regional African organizations, and a variety of nongovernmental coalitions—made considerable progress in defining objectives: advances in health, education, sustainable economic development, security, democratic participation, and gender equality. Implementation of such goals will require maximizing collaboration both within and across national and continental boundaries.