Today, Americans decide who leads them between President Barack Obama and former Governor Mitt Romney. The two of them have laid out their programmes. Whichever way it goes, what is in it for Nigeria and Africa,? Olukorede Yishau, in Chicago, reports
In the last four years that he has been America’s president, Barack Obama, whose father hailed from Kenya, has only visited sub-Saharan Africa once. It was a stopover of less than a day in neigbouring Ghana. He has held meetings at the White House with 12 African leaders, including President Goodluck Jonathan.
The continent has practically not featured in the U.S. presidential election campaign. Pressing domestic issues, such as lack of jobs and how to prod America’s stuttering economy into faster growth, have taken centre-stage, expectedly.
So, the question is: what is in it for Africa? Obama’s aides said if re-elected he would focus on sub-Saharan Africa as part of the unfinished business from his first term, including anti-AIDS initiatives, food security and economic development programmes.
The Romney campaign sees Africa as “not a problem to be contained, but an opportunity to be embraced”. It has urged much more private sector participation in U.S. trade and development initiatives in Africa, in addition to the more traditional programmes for education and HIV/AIDS.
Chair of the Romney campaign’s Africa Policy Working Group Ambassador Tibor Nagy said: “If you say the word Africa, in most Americans’ minds what you basically come up with is the four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Everything is negative. Famine, pestilence, degradation, war.”
Nagy, who was ambassador to Ethiopia and Guinea, believes a Romney administration would take a fresh, more positive approach. He said: “I would say look at Africa through the windscreen and not the rearview mirror”.
In the last four years of Obama, counter-terrorism focus has been driving U.S. policy towards Africa. Washington throws its weight behind efforts in Nigeria and elsewhere on the continent to confront the spreading presence of terrorists, such as Boko Haram and Al-Shabab.
Director of Sub-Saharan Africa analysis at STRATFOR Global Intelligence Mark Schroeder told Reuters that this security focus would figure strongly whoever wins the election. “These concerns don’t recognise borders,” he said.
The position of the U.S. government on Boko Haram is not likely to change. The government sees Boko Haram as a response to frustration with the country’s leadership.
“I want to take this opportunity to stress one key point and that is that religion is not driving extremist violence either in Jos or northern Nigeria,” Assistant Secretary of State Carson said at a forum on U.S. policy towards Nigeria held at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C.
He added: “While some seek to inflame Muslim-Christian tensions, Nigeria’s ethnic and religious diversity, like our own in this country, is a source of strength, not weakness and there are many examples across Nigeria of communities working across religious lines to protect one another.”
Carson said Boko Haram “capitalises on popular frustrations with the nation’s leaders,” and “seeks to humiliate and undermine the government and to exploit religious differences in order to create chaos and to make Nigeria ungovernable.”
Wherever the pendulum swings, many expect a continuation of the Bill Clinton’s African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which waives import duties on thousands of goods exported to the U.S. from eligible countries, George W. Bush’s President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the Millennium Challenge Corporation, a U.S. aid vehicle that assists countries with good governance.
There is also the strategy for Africa launched by Obama in June. The U.S. Strategy Towards Sub-Saharan Africa reflects the core components and strategic priorities outlined in the Presidential Policy Directive. The strategy sets forth four strategic objectives for U.S. engagement in Africa: strengthen democratic institutions; spur economic growth, trade, and investment; advance peace and security; and promote opportunity and development.
The Obama administration said: “In Fiscal Year 2011, the United States provided $262 million in assistance to improve the overall professionalisation of African militaries and to enhance their ability to better respond to challenges such as peace-keeping, maritime security, and counterterrorism. Additionally, the United States provided, and continues to provide, significant support to peace-keeping operations across the continent, including the United Nations Organisation Stabilisation Mission in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (MONUSCO), the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM). Through the U.S. National Action Plan on Women, Peace, and Security, we continue to advance efforts to strengthen women’s participation in peacebuilding and protect women from sexual and gender-based violence in conflict.
“In 2012, the U.S. led the G-8 to launch the New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition, a partnership between the G-8, African governments, the African Union, international partners, private investors, and civil society to substantially accelerate agricultural growth across the continent and help more than 50 million people emerge from poverty over the next ten years.
“The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank), for the first time in its history, approved projects totaling more than $1 billion in 2011 to support the exports of U.S. companies to sub-Saharan Africa. Two of the nine countries in the world selected by Ex-Im Bank as priority strategic markets for U.S. exports – South Africa and Nigeria – are in sub-Saharan Africa. In fiscal year 2011, the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC) supported over $1 billion in private-sector investments in Sub-Saharan Africa, representing over one-third of its total commitments for the year. This is in addition to OPIC approving $367 million for four private equity funds that could mobilise an additional $1 billion for investments made in the health, agricultural, and small and medium enterprise sectors.“
But, no matter what America under Obama feels it has done for Africa, many on the continent believe it lags behind other emerging players such as China, Brazil, India and South Korea. Since 2009, China has become Africa’s largest trading partner. Chinese President Hu Jintao has visited at least 17 countries.
Mwangi Kimenyi, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution said: “We would have expected to see more American involvement instead of a retreat. If you go to many countries and ask them about who is doing more, they will tell you China.”
The U.S. government said exports to sub-Saharan Africa increased 40 percent from 2009 to 2011 and are on track to double by 2013/14. Significantly though, trade between the United States and sub-Saharan African countries totaled $94.3 billion in 2011, China’s Africa trade totaled $127.3 billion, eclipsing the U.S.-Africa trade record of $104.1 billion in 2008.
All African eyes are on the next American president.
Short takes
Obama
“We know what the future requires. We don’t need a big-government agenda or a small-government agenda. We need a middle-class agenda that rewards hard work and responsibility. We know what change looks like, and what the governor (Mitt Romney) is offering sure isn’t it.”
Mitt Romney
“The same course we have been on will not lead to a better destination. The same path we are on means $20 trillion in debt at the end of a second term – that he won’t have. It means crippling unemployment. It means stagnant take-home pay, depressed home values, a devastated military. And by the way, unless we change course, we may be looking at another recession. So the question of this election comes down to this: do you want more of the same or do you want real change? President Obama promised change but he could not deliver change. Now, I promise change and I have a record of achieving real change.”
Paul Ryan
“In 2008, President Obama made lots of grandiose promises. You remember hope and change? Remember how he would bring everybody together? He hasn’t met with our party leaders since last July. Remember when he said he would cut the deficit in half? It has doubled. Remember when he said he would create all of these jobs? Look, we just got the latest employment report. And the unemployment rate is higher than the day he took office. You have got 23 million Americans struggling to find work in this country today. 15per cent of our fellow citizens are living in poverty today. It is the highest rate in a generation. We are nine million jobs shy of what he said we would achieve if only he could borrow all that stimulus money and spend it on all of these interest groups. Look, this isn’t working. We have a jobs crisis. Wouldn’t it be nice to have an actual job creator in the White House during a jobs crisis? We need leadership.”
Evangelist Billy Graham
“The legacy we leave behind for our children, grandchildren and this great nation is crucial. As I approach my 94th birthday, I realise this election could be my last. I believe it is vitally important that we cast our ballots for candidates who base their decisions on biblical principles and support the nation of Israel. I urge you to vote for those who protect the sanctity of life and support the biblical definition of marriage between a man and a woman. Vote for biblical values this November 6, and pray with me that America will remain one nation under God.”
Opinion: What’s really at stake in election 2012
When no one was looking, Obama was a humble community organizer fighting for poor Americans who had lost their jobs. Four years ago, his critics mocked him for that. Today, we see a lot has changed about him … but not that. He is still fighting for those Americans who are hurting, and it gives me a measure of peace knowing that the person in charge of making tough budget cuts has a record of working with people who are hurting.
I’m sure Mitt Romney is a decent man, and he’s given millions to his church. But I can’t shake the fact the self-proclaimed “son of Detroit” did not come around the city when it began to struggle in the 1980s. The great “job creator” did nothing for the city when it was hemorrhaging jobs in the 1990s and to this day he only seems to come around Detroit during election time.
If this is how the “son” treats family, I can only imagine the disregard he holds for strangers. Actually I don’t have to imagine. I watched the 47per cent video. The one that was taped when he thought no one outside of the room would be listening.
This is why he’s trailing in Michigan and Massachusetts, the two states to which he’s most closely tied. It’s not because he’s Republican. The three Massachusetts governors before Romney were Republican, while four of the past six governors in Michigan were Republicans, including his father.
He trails because the people there know him.
They know his record. His real record.
Not the manicured version he presents on the campaign trail, but the unabridged version he began writing before his life in politics began. The version all future politicians script with the decisions that they make.
I’m not wearing blinders. I know Obama is just as flawed as Romney. He’s a politician. How can he not be?
But at the end of the day I’d rather have President Barack Obama in the White House, someone with a record of being about the work of helping others before he was in office, than Mitt Romney, someone who has a record of talking about it once he got there could also point to the death of Osama bin Laden or the currency collapse in Iran because of the sanctions that he’s led.
But to fully understand why I voted for Obama, one only needs to look at this quote from author H. Jackson Brown Jr.: “Our character is what we do when we think no one is looking.”
Romney’s vision for America
The Republican charge up Capitol Hill, however, was not led by party purists. The flags of the tea party waved high over the Democratic trouncing, and created a whole new road for GOP presidential hopefuls such as Romney. The uncompromising tea partiers made it clear they would get behind only someone who paid the toll of a hard and unmistakable turn to the right, especially on fiscal matters.
And as Kirk puts it, “A candidate (who makes that turn) stands very little chance of getting back to the center in time for the general election.”
Was he ever ‘severely conservative’ enough?
Romney was always an awkward fit. He had a hard time embracing the far right with enthusiasm, and the right felt the same about him. That is one reason why the nomination process dragged on so long, as the faithful tried to make it work with Rick Perry, Herman Cain, Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum.
But Romney was not just wrestling with philosophical differences.
“Something else that pulls candidates away from the middle is money,” says assistant professor Georgia Kernell at Northwestern University’s Department of Political Science, where she is a fellow in The Institute for Policy Research. She notes that Romney’s now infamous “47 percent” comment was almost certainly spurred by the need to appeal to right-wing donors at that fundraiser.
“He didn’t have to say it,” Kernell says, “but it certainly made (his message) more powerful.” The same might be said about candidate Barack Obama’s similar stumble four years ago when he privately told donors that rural voters “cling to their guns or religion.”
Kernell believes the Republican nominee, all things considered, has walked the tightrope well. “I actually think Romney did a great job using the first debate to position himself back in the middle.”
It all came at a price. His vacillation between the right and center has allowed Team Obama to pelt him with accusations of flip-flopping and a schizophrenic candidacy, leaving Romney unable to crawl out of the margin-of-error trench.
