Whatever the outcome of the US presidential election slated for November 5, it will present to Africa with both a challenge and opportunity. Already Donald Trump, former U.S president is the formal nominee of his Republican Party and Kamala Harris, current vice president has inherited the outcome of the Democratic Party nomination of former candidate, Joe Biden and is now presidential candidate of the party. Vice President Harris is on the momentous threshold of history, if she manages to pull off a victory that will see her become the first female U.S President in the over 200 years of the country’s history.
However, each candidate, like the previous leaders of the country, since Barak Obama, would offer very little in terms of critical tangibles in relations with Africa. That does not mean that Africa would be struck off the maps in the Oval Presidential Office, State Department (Foreign Affairs Ministry), or even the Pentagon (the Defence Ministry). It is just in the nature U.S statecraft that when there is a clash between the choice of values and interest, the rational pick is the later.
Many countries in Africa, including Nigeria emphasize shared values of liberal democracy with the United States. While this is true, it does not in reality shape the U.S policy. Like every other nation, foreign policy is organized to generate returns of critical aggregates that translate to strength, influence and national power.
Currently, the United States have quite a number of domestic challenges that would influence the direction of her foreign policy. Despite what appears like a gulf of differences between the candidates of the two major parties, their approach to foreign policy would be the same. The U.S post-industrial economy has failed to deliver broad dividends, thereby massively excluding a huge swath of citizens. The Republican candidate Donald Trump laments the country’s massive deindustrialization, which he said currently stand at 64%. His solution is to massively increase import tariffs in what he thinks would lure industries back to the United States. The flip side of this strategy however, is that imported finished products will be expensive for the working families, he claimed to fight for and due to labour costs and other related factors of production, product manufacturing in the United States will not be reasonably cost effective as to be competitive. However, these basic economic facts will not deter a President Trump from launching a wide ranging trade war especially with China and even Europe, whose consequences, Africa must proactively anticipate and build the necessary resilience with a view to optimize the opportunities and minimize the risks associated with it.
The fledgling Africa Growth Opportunity Act, AGOA, established since 2000, but has languished because of extensive political meddling by the U.S successive administrations will further drown into irrelevance as the incoming administration, whether Republican or Democratic, will erect further high walls of tariff. Meanwhile, Africa’s economic prospects of growth and sustainable development lay substantially in trade and investments and only a paltry of this essential economic oxygen can come from the United States and the global West.
The Democratic Party’s candidate may not have starkly outlined trade policy as her Republican rival has done, but would do much of the same, with the difference being only regards to the intensity of the rhetoric.
With ballooning crime, gun violence and rising racial tensions in the U.S, candidate Trump sees the only solution in building high-fence border walls to deter what he called “invasion” of criminals, rapists whom he claimed are deliberately unleashed on the U.S from prisons and mental homes from across the world. He has promised to start from his “Day One” in office to deport undocumented immigrants. Despite that the United States has historically benefitted from being a melting pot, with relative open borders that attracted talents, from across the world, demonizing migrants as the cause of all U.S contemporary domestic troubles, is the new rallying point for U.S political elites across party lines. Vice President Kamala Harris has been uptick in the anti-migrant rhetoric too.
Largely, a problem of poorly managed economic transition, that left a huge swath of the population at the bottom, the U.S economic and social troubles, for which its elites disproportionately blame on migration, with its consequent policy choices, have ramification for the expectations of U.S-Africa relations. More importantly, the critical inputs to address the structural lacunas in the U.S economy will objectively have little coming from Africa and therefore, the task and challenge of U.S economic recovery will not be considerably consequential to her relations with Africa.
To this effect, the leadership that would emerge from the November elections will focus largely on dealing with broad range of domestic issues and the consequent foreign policy direction would be essentially transactional. However, no matter the weight and the attention to domestic issues which the administration might be devoted to, the U.S is still the world sole superpower, the wealthiest and even the most influential and therefore, relations with Washington is considerably consequential for any country or region.
The challenge for Africa is therefore, how to maintain strategic visibility. In recent times, U.S attention to Africa has been largely on geo-political considerations with an only strategic and limited aim of cutting down or reducing what Washington considers the outsize influence and impact of China and to a lesser degree, Russia in Africa. This also offers some opportunity for Africa to leverage her strategic competitiveness as a geo-political entity of interest to major powers.
But the opportunity for a more inward-looking America for Africa is even more enormous. Africa can pivot to vital global centres most likely to bring the tangible inputs necessary to support durable resilience in African economies for sustainable and inclusive growth.
An inward-looking America, more pragmatically concerned with economic recovery and other essentially domestic issues, would not only be less sensitive to such pivot, but would not automatically consider such pivot as ideological heresy. Africa can leverage a less meddlesome America to consolidate on the diversification of her international partnerships.
The U.S Presidential election in November is the country’s internal affair, with doubtless international significance not least because Washington is vital in resolving most of the big global issues. Whether is President Donald J. Trump or President Kamala Harris, what happens in Washington will continue to matter to the world, and Africa’s enormous soft power which consist in the main, the African-American community will remain an important bridge of the U.S-Africa relations. Despite several multi-layered ties with the United States, Africa must recognize that the sole superpower will have only marginal impact in the area of economic cooperation with practical results for the region.
America’s traditional security concerns in Africa has always focused on the symptoms rather that the root causes and has consequently had little effects on the security challenges in the continent and it will be important that Africa makes the U.S to listen to her, if Washington truly want to be a credible security partner.
One thing very discernible about America’s international behaviour is that durability of her partnership is contingent on her shifting internal politics and cannot be relied on in the long term. Africa’s long march to economic goal of sustained and inclusive growth, and stability require long-term players who can be trusted through the twists and turns of the evolving international landscape. And in this regards, Africa can borrow a leaf from the sturdy Vietnam’s “Bamboo Diplomacy” which emphasizes flexibility and pragmatism but with independence and national interests as the solid root. Bamboo is a symbol of longevity because of its durability, strength, flexibility and resilience. Africa’s bamboo tree is even sturdier with capability to bend in several directions while deeply rooted in the soil.
•Onunaijiu is research director of an Abuja-based think tank.
