Conclusion

I have argued that the Obama administration has intro-duced a consultative management style to U.S.-Africa relations. A number of new ad hoc consultative mechanisms have emerged to complement traditional Africa-U.S. communi-cation channels. The range of constituencies and actors the U.S. government consults on African issues has been broadened. The new actors invited by the Obama administration to join the consultation processes include the leadership of the AU, influential young Africans, and leading women entrepreneurs in Africa. On the other hand, the change in management style has altered neither the substance of U.S.-Africa relations established by the Clinton and the Bush administrations nor the eclectic institutions developed by the Bush administration to manage African affairs.

The Obama administration has kept faith with the cosmopolitan-inspired political and economic relations developed during President Clinton’s administration. Relations between the U.S. and Africa under President Clinton were driven primarily by two policy goals: 1) the liberalization of economic and political systems in Africa, and 2) preventing the African continent from becoming a security burden on the international community. The Clinton administration developed AGOA to anchor U.S.-Africa relations; the Bush administration securitized and humanized them by introducing and strengthening a number of Africa-related security initiatives and by quadrupling humanitarian assistance to Africa. The Bush White House introduced AFRICOM, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and PEPFAR to manage security and humanitarian programs. These policies of Presidents Clinton and Bush, managed by eclectic institutions, are the pillars of U.S.-Africa relations during the Obama administration.

The wholesale adoption of these policies has exposed the Obama administration to the accusation that it has done little to address problems in U.S.-Africa relations. I have drawn attention to the problem of comparatively weak institutional capacity at the Africa Bureau and the organizational incoherence of U.S. institutions dealing with African affairs. The Obama administration could have reorganized and strengthened these institutions to ensure policy and institutional coherence, to ensure that both North Africa and so-called sub-Saharan Africa come under one organizational structure, and to assure Africans that the Obama administration is not interested in divide and rule, but rather is genuinely committed to building partnership with Africans to improve conditions in Africa.

The Obama administration could have taken a broader approach to promoting good governance in Africa, but the current U.S. governance policy assumes that formal sovereign states rule the majority of Africans. I argue that the empirical fact is, rather, that the majority of Africans are governed by indigenous institutions such as chiefdoms. Any approach to political reform that excludes these institutions will not achieve the intended results. The heavy focus on the Westphalian African state and its elite in part explains why many reform programs in Africa, including anti-corruption initiatives sponsored by the U.S. government, have not produced the hoped-for outcomes.

The focus on the state has played a major role in the U.S. government’s failure to develop effective counter-terrorism policies regarding Africa. On the one hand, this focus has discouraged the U.S. from teaming up with regional institutions including the AU to develop effective, coordinated region-wide counter-terrorism programs. On the other hand, this narrow view of governance has influenced U.S. policymakers to remain oblivious to the urgent necessity of working with local authorities and kinship groups to find the few bad apples in the barrel and prevent their emergence as active terrorists in an otherwise pro-American continent. The so-called traditional political and legal systems in Africa and regional organizations such as the AU offer many institutional apparatuses that the U.S. can use to root out terrorism. Doing so may, in fact, be the cheapest and most enduring way of fighting transnational terrorism in Africa. In addition, the heavy focus on Westphalian African states has limited the ability of U.S. policymakers to utilize some of the effective governance, conflict management, and problem-solving tools that exist at the local level in many parts of Africa.

I have pointed out that the Obama administration needed to review President Bush’s heavy investment in Westphalian African state institutions such as the military, because these institutions appear to have given African elites yet more opportunities to restrict the already limited civil and political liberties gained by Africans in recent years. Governments in Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Kenya, and Uganda that have benefited from the U.S.’s considerable investment in the security institutions of their states have exploited those benefits to abuse human rights. Some of them have engaged in arbitrary arrests of individuals, arbitrary searches, and periodic arrests of suspects’ family members. Others have detained suspects for lengthy periods of time at undisclosed locations, denied them legal representation, used harsh interrogation tactics, and in some instances allowed foreign security agents to interrogate suspects in a manner and style inconsistent with international standards.

I have suggested there is mounting evidence that some U.S. security programs in Africa may not be in the best security interests of Africans; the Obama administration could have extended its review of the Afghanistan mission to cover U.S. security programs in Africa. Some of these programs have encouraged civil-military imbalance, strengthened the executive arms of governments in Africa against democratic institutions, and limited the ability of the U.S. military to obtain human intelligence from local Africans. The preferential treatment of some African states has led to the accusation that the U.S. government has adopted colonial tactics of divide- and-rule to manage its African relations. Opportunities have thus been created for would-be terrorists to play cat- and-mouse games with U.S. security agencies. The over-concentration on the Sahel and the Horn of Africa means that the Southern Africa sub-region, which astute observers of African security see as attractive to terrorists because of its superior transportation links, its infrastructure, its international linkages, and its relative freedom of movement, has received little attention or support from the U.S. government.

I have indicated that many farmers and agro-businesses in Africa, for example cotton producers, would react very positively if President Obama could muster the political courage to reform Africa-U.S. economic relations, particularly the aspect that has allowed dumping of subsidized goods into the African market while simultaneously keeping African goods and services—mostly goods of poor farmers—out of the U.S. market. Policy reform could start with AGOA. Given that even Secretary of State Clinton has publicly stated AGOA has not lived up to expectations, and given that perceptive observers of U.S.-Africa relations partly blame AGOA for the reduction in government revenue and public investment in social programs in Africa, this is a clear starting point for reform. Some also blame AGOA for undermining implementation of the African Economic Community treaty specifically and the African integration process in general.

The allocation and distribution of U.S. aid to Africa is another area of U.S.-Africa relations where reform could be mutually beneficial. Many Africans and U.S. tax payers would welcome reforms that redirect U.S. aid from African elites—including even those in the NGO business who do not need financial assistance but have benefited the most from the existing U.S. aid regime—to programs that benefit hard-working African poor in mostly rural areas. The Obama administration could also reform U.S. financial assistance to encourage U.S. investors to invest in African states with good governance records.

Lastly, I have pointed out that most pan-Africanists and most of the AU leadership would like to see President Obama move beyond rhetoric and consultations to build a genuine partnership with the AU to solve some of the pressing African challenges. A strong U.S.-AU partnership would encourage the AU leadership to implement some of the forward-looking instruments, such as the democracy and governance charter, the anti-corruption charter, the treaty of the African Economic Community, and counter-terrorism measures; all are key items President Obama has publicly claimed he seeks to promote in Africa. Good working relations between the AU and the U.S. under President Obama would be historic; such relations would bring African governments another step closer to translating into reality the dream of pan-Africanism, a dream built on foundational ideas developed and promoted by African-Americans and their Caribbean counterparts in the first half of the twentieth century.