Africa Africa
where does it rank?
The west African nation of Niger broke into the news over the past 48 hours as the National Council for Safeguarding the Nation, officers from the Presidential Guard, imprisoned the president. Today those same officers claim they ‘put an end to the regime’ of Mohamed Bazoum, ignoring his legitimate election in 2021.
Niger is land-locked in a tough neighbourhood with Mali, long a concern to anti-extremist governments in the west, and Chad, a challenging country to its east, so close. Niger’s first democratically-elected regime during the nation’s sixty year independence confronts its own extremist worries as Islamic radicals crossing from neighbouring states confound the country’s leadership while westerners watch nervously.
Africa is my greatest personal blank spot in world affairs. I admit it. I should know a lot more. My closest friend in graduate school focused on South Africa and spent time in Rwanda years after the genocide.
Another friend was a Peace Corps volunteer in Niger in the late 1970s as he had the unenviable task of teaching locals to raise fish in their lakes to increase domestic food stuffs. This guy was really outdoorsy after studying at the University of Idaho but inland west Africa always struck me as a particular challenge for raising fish as the Sahara continues pushing south. I wonder how much impact his work had on fishing while I am confident his two years left a marked impression on the small village where he lived.
The Peace Corps, one of the programs President Kennedy added to our expanded national security instruments, always served as a connecting point for young Americans seeking to represent us abroad while also helping local populations improve their conditions. Presence overseas matters and that was something the Corps offered, even if it did not solve world peace. It is a diminished program today as idealism and USG financial support are in shorter supply than when the President created it less than six weeks after reaching the White House in 1961.
Over its 60 year history and because of the number of independent states on the continent, I am confident we have sent more Peace Corps volunteers to Africa than anywhere else. Those who serve their two to three year tours love Africa. Its people, its multiple cultures and languages, its families, and its history before slavery tends to draw some of the best and brightest of all backgrounds from this country to build ties. It gets into their hearts unlike anywhere else.
Indeed, a substantial portion of the Foreign Service Officers I have known spent as much of their careers on the ground across this vast region as possible. In my association with literally thousands of National War College students over the years, the Africanists were hands down most passionate to about returning absolutely as soon as possible (The only exception was one rescued by the Marines in Mogadishu in 1991 when Siad Barré fell. Knowing the harrowing tales I have heard of that evacuation, I understand the desire to avoid that again). Most ambassadors to this region are career Foreign Service rather than wealthy political donors which shows the depth of appreciation FSOs have for these people.
If War College students weren’t enough, my teaching colleagues from whatever U.S. Government agency (and there are more than you might realise) had precisely the same reaction. One colleague I particularly admire was an Africanist from outside of the Foreign Service. I asked her why she is so widely known in her agency as passionate about Africa. She broke into a wonderful grin, said she had wandered into an undergraduate course on the region, then never looked back. She typifies those who know the region, travel there frequently, and thrive on its diversity.
Yet the majority of Americans we know virtually nothing about Africa. We might know that South Africa had human rights champion and freedom advocate Nelson Mandela but as the years pass, I doubt that will feature as prominently as some now question his family legacy. Scholars studying extremism recall the kidnapping of Nigerian (how many people know that Nigeria and Niger are not the same?) school girls but may well not realise that by tne end of this century, Nigeria will have one of the largest populations on the planet. By 2050, a mere 27 years away, demographers anticipate more than 377 million Nigerians. Some still associate the continent with the outbreak fo Ebola, Marberg, and other global illnesses as if they didn’t come from other places as well.
Americans know, in sum, startlingly little about Africa as a continent or as individual countries. It remains the dark continent where our light of understanding is not yet on, with notable exceptions in programs that study specific aspects of the continent. African Americans may well study various portions of the slave trade that brought their ancestors here under bondage. Ecologists study the abundance of climate data on Africa as it is more varied than that of any other continent, thus relevant for seeking solutions. Missionaries of all Christian faiths see Africa as a reservoir of faithful as the citizens of many countries embrace the array of sects, thus providing hope for the future as religious enthusiasm ebbs and flows in its legacy locations. but we don’t seem to pull all of Africa into our view to understand its strengths, weaknesses, intricacies, and unifying factors.
Some students of the world worry about Vlad the Impaler’s yen to bring African nations closer to Moscow by promoting an anti-colonial coalition. While French, British, Belgian, and other European colonial legacies in this region remain painful, Putin’s own Soviet-borne Cold War legacy is hardly better. As the events unfolded this week in Niamey, press reports indicate that Putin failed to woo many African leaders to support his aggression against Ukraine.
Similarly, breathy reports focus on Xi Jinping’s Belt & Road Initiative as if Africans (like Latin Americans across the Atlantic) don’t understand the dangers of debt and resource extraction industries. Africans and Latin Americans not only know the game that Xi is playing but recognise their role in potentially tying China down with massive loans to these countries. There is much complexity to the entire dynamic which Xi may not want to admit but hushed voices in Beijing acknolwledge as the wonder if the Belt & Road is becoming a sink hole.
The temptation to engage with Xi and Putin, however, has a raw human reality: a committed ruler in any state may well have inadequate resources to improve the lot of his population so how can he responsibly reject assistance in the form of loans or sales of raw materials and energy? In the era of greater U.S. reluctance to provide foreign assistance and/or loans, either Xi or Putin remains the only viable option for some of these nations.
Worse, the corruption consuming some of the nations means that U.S. assistance will never arrive because we tie aid to our governance priorities in other countries. Those include assuring human rights conditions are met and competitive elections are held. Neither China nor Russia care about that aspect of the internal affairs of others as it could raise questions about what occurs at home. It starts to be clear why the People’s Liberation Army’s first acknowledged foreign base is in Djibouti where human rights problems co-mingle long-term governance challenges. That the United States similarly bases a Task Force there did not result from supporting a thriving democracy but because we feared the Chinese had a geostrategic advantage.
And the Djibouti tidbit reminds us how there is a gulf between us and Africa. We view it not as an objective to understand, celebrate, or engage with Africans as equals but the world too often treats the continent a pawn in a geostrategic game. Africans, like Latin Americans, find this frustrating, humiliating, and enduring. Back to Portuguese sailors arriving on the coast en route to the Malaccas and the mysteries of the Orient, Africa always seems full of stopovers rather than destinations.
For the United States to foresee events like that of the coup in Niamey this week, we need to understand preferences, concerns, and strengths of the nations of Africa: the word context for strategists is relevant and essential. Perhaps we will never get there but we can expect to chase after Xi and Putin in this region in an era of great power competition if we view it as only importance once they have moved further into the region.
I suggest we determine what our interests in Africa are. We say we have done that but I am not sure anyone can name them easily. Handwaves are not clear interests yet so many reports, strategies, agencies and committees default to that level of specificity. Being in Africa because Russia and China are there is not an interest; it’s a move to counter them. Answering why it matters that they are there (or anywhere else) is a foundation. If we have no interests, we ought to be clear on that so we not spend resources that could go elsewhere.
For domestic reasons outlined above, however, we well may find that we need care more than we think. Interests say that we may care but not as much as in other areas. That is why we ought engage in a national debate about why we are interested in any and every part of the world and where they in fact rank against one another. We are not currently doing that, assuming all that matters is China until China shows up elsewhere so they cycle begins anew. That isn’t sustainable for a number of reasons we talk about frequently in this column such as the national budget, the All Volunteer force stretched too thin, and more. If China is our primary interest in Africa, we need clearly explain what changes if we are not there as well as when we are. That would be a start we must take.
We are hoping the heat breaks this weekend for all. Be safe.FIN
Aaron Boxerman, ‘What’s Behind the Coup Attempt in Niger?’, nytimes.com, 27 July 2023, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/world/africa/niger-coup-president-bazoum.html
Anton Troianovski, Declan Walsh, and Lynsey Chutel, ‘Wooing African Nations, Putin Casts West as Common Foe’, nytimes.com, 27 July 2023, retrieved at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/27/world/europe/russia-africa-summit-putin.html?action=click&algo=bandit-all-surfaces-time-cutoff-30_impression_cut_3_filter_new_arm_5_1&alpha=0.05&block=more_in_recirc&fellback=false&imp_id=5128757559399116&impression_id=9e54d1d0-2d70-11ee-813b-250ed7683e02&index=4&pgtype=Article&pool=more_in_pools%2Fafrica®ion=footer&req_id=3955926567770472&surface=eos-more-in&variant=0_bandit-all-surfaces-time-cutoff-30_impression_cut_3_filter_new_arm_5_1
Interesting ideas and you are right- the few people that I know that have gone to Africa for various reasons- Peace Corps, adoption all have loved the region they were in.