Africa in the age of a new "Cold" War
“Cold War conflicts played havoc with African politics. They skewed the complex processes of decolonisation, and snuffed out many of the fledgling democracies that emerged in the late 1950s and early 1960s. US and Soviet intelligence agencies played kingmakers, financing and overseeing coups to install biddable rulers. Both powers tended to suborn corruptible local strongmen with military backgrounds and authoritarian instincts.”
In view of the above, the idea that any country in Africa that was on the short of the so-called “Cold War” would be clamoring for an encore is incredulous. At the end of wars, it is inevitable that belligerents will walk away with different lessons depending on whether they end up in the win or loss column. For victims, however, their experience and lessons are divorced from those of active belligerents. Since the version of history that thrives is an account of the victor, lessons learned will remain divergent.
This absence of a shared version of history clearly haunts the relationship between the “winners” of the first Cold War and its victims. In Washington, at least by the first slew of proposed legislation out of the Republican-led House of Representatives, is what one can arguably describe as nostalgia for a great power conflict with clearly defined sides “for” and “against”. The 17-bill volley is intended to isolate China’s economy and financial system. Isolating the world’s second largest economy and the largest trading partner of 120 countries will present significant challenges, especially if the isolation process includes punishing countries that pursue economic exchanges with China.
In much of Africa, at least going by their leaders’ statements, there is a revulsion toward anything that forces a choice “for” or “against”. For many of these African countries, there was no “cold” war. Largely protected from the civil wars, murders, coups d’etat and breakdown of social order that wreaked havoc across the then “third world”, westerners are comfortable with referring to the period as a “cold” war, not because they do not acknowledge the proxy wars in former colonies, but because Western countries were not kinetic theaters. Having suffered no direct deaths and destruction, it’s not unreasonable to look favorably upon that period – a luxury many Africans cannot afford.
At the just ended Dakar Financing Summit (Feb. 1 – 3), it was stark to juxtapose the world in Washington which was in a tizzy about the Chinese balloon and that of the conference center in Dakar where out of all the panels and speeches the balloon did not come up once. African leaders clearly inhabited a completely different world with a unique set of priorities. The conversations in Dakar centered around the continent’s existential problems – poverty, infrastructure, responding to a changing climate and with good reasons. On current trends, over 80 percent of the world’s extreme poor will live in Africa by 2030. Intra-Africa trade has declined from 17 percent in the 1990s to 12.1 percent today. Foreign policy is a function of the domestic demands and the immediate environment. There is thus no incentive for African states to pursue a foreign policy of exclusion. China surpassed the United States as Africa’s largest trading partner 14 years ago. Two-way trade between China and Africa reached $282 billion last year, an 11% increase YoY. At about $40 billion, two-way trade between the US and Africa is about a fifth of China-Africa trade. It is difficult to imagine a material reduction in that economic relationship even under threat of US “punishment”.
US foreign policy that actively seeks to convert multilateral institutions into tools of American foreign policy will ultimately breed resentment in countries that may not even be aligned with China. A trend in which US foreign policy increasingly imposes costs on any cooperation with China will invariably yield less than desired results. In the last two decades, while citizens of the rest of the world faced progressively ridiculously hurdles simply to obtain US visas, it has become easier for Africans to visit and study in China. It is not unusual for the citizens, of the same countries the US seeks to convert to its side, to face wait times of over a year for an appointment for a US visitor’s visa. From playing host to a negligible number of African students at the turn of the century, there were over 80,000 African students in China by the time the pandemic hit. Chinese scholarships to African students exceed those from all Western countries combined. That trend is largely demand driven since, give the choice, most of those students will prefer to study in the West.
A full decade of Western critique of Chinese lending practices has still not yielded a true competitor to China’s BRI. The rise in China’s influence across lower- and middle-income countries did not come on the strength of Chinese ideology or the compelling logic of Chinese governance model – it has come on China’s ability to meet pressing needs in those economies, mainly infrastructure. There are tens of thousands of kilometers of roads and rail, megawatts of power – seaports, airports, water filtration plants and miles of irrigation canals that would not exist today without Chinese financing. Every country aspires to thrive, nobody wants to perpetually subsist on the generosity of others. Building infrastructure is a crucial link to increasing productivity. It would be a mistake for US law makers to pursue a strategy of compelling compliance with American positions through the brute force of federal legislation and overly weaponizing the centrality of the US in the global economy to “punish” countries which do not “fall in line.”
In his 1958 State of the Union Address, Eisenhower noted that in a great power competition, “mutual economic assistance” programs were a potent tool. He was keen to point out that “Nations that are conscious of a steady improvement in their industry, education, health and standard of living are not apt to fall prey to the blandishments of communist imperialists.” Nations will respond positively to partners who contribute to steady improvement in their quality of life. The US already has a compelling story to tell and it must build from that position of strength rather than compensate for perceived weakness. It is no secret that the US perceives China’s infrastructure building capabilities and campaign as a point of American weakness.
The US is still the world leader in supporting human capital development across the world. As we celebrate 20 years of PEPFAR history, it is important to recognize what an unrivaled achievement it has been. A world without PEPFAR is one of total carnage across the African continent. Over $100 billion in the fight against aids over those twenty years is the largest ever disbursement by any nation for the eradication of a single disease. US support through bilateral and multilateral channels for health, education and other social programs are crucial to the provision of those services across the developing world. It is the assumption that these acts are an argument for themselves that has left the US struggling for a narrative to “counter” its rivals. An estimated $20 of the $55 billion commitment to Africa over the next three years will go toward health care – including pandemic preparedness and vaccine manufacturing. Without that scale of investment, we will measure the cost in lives and livelihoods across the continent. US human capital investment is thus complementary to China’s hard infrastructure expertise. The insistence that one is better than the other or that China should reap no benefit (influence or otherwise) is ridiculous.
In this push for a second Cold War, it is important to note that across the African continent there is a plethora of challenges – some existential that do not afford these countries the luxury of taking sides in a great power competition. A push to punish them for not taking sides is guaranteed to yield suboptimal outcomes and run the risk of eliciting the opposite of the desired response.