Christopher Trip Points to Fraying in U.S.-Africa Ties

Warren Christopher’s visit to Africa this week--the first by a U.S. secretary of state in the post-Cold War era--has become such a big deal that it prompted a banner headline, “Welcome Warren,” across the top half of the front page of one newspaper here.

An entire road--in a poor country larger than California and Texas combined, where 95% of the roads are just dirt tracks and there is not a single highway--was graded to ease his trip to a rural Peace Corps post.

Christopher, in turn, has come to tell this continent that the United States still cares.

“Africa embodies so many of the global or transnational issues that I think will be at the forefront of American foreign policy in the next century,” he told reporters with him.

Yet, in fact, the United States has so withdrawn from Africa that it is only on the margins of America’s post-Cold War agenda, analysts and U.S.-Africa specialists say, publicly and privately.

As one frustrated envoy observed: “People are well-intentioned, but it’s very difficult to sell anyone on Africa programs these days.”

Under congressional pressure, U.S. aid to many of Earth’s poorest states that need it the most has plummeted. The average annual income in Mali, for example, is $250. The poverty is so overwhelming in this steamy city that a whole block in the open market downtown sells used underwear. Malians have put so much pressure on their environment that they are turning good land into desert, and--though the name of their capital, Bamako, means “crocodile river”--there are no longer any such reptiles in the mighty Niger that runs through it.

At the same time, U.S. development aid to sub-Saharan Africa is down 25% compared with last year--which, in turn, was down compared with 1994. France, Japan and Germany all now give more aid to Africa than America does. Denmark is close.

The United States allocates roughly $630 million a year to 47 African countries, which account for about 15% of the world population and more than 20% of its landmass. In contrast, America provides $3 billion to Israel.

Across this continent, U.S. consulates have been closed and diplomatic staffs slashed, with more cuts scheduled over the next five years. U.S. diplomats regularly complain that they get so little response or attention from Washington to pressing local issues that they feel isolated.

“Africa has never been more marginal in world affairs than it is today. And for the United States, it is dropping off the radar screen,” said Larry Diamond, senior fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution and co-editor of the Journal of Democracy.

The Christopher entourage insists otherwise.

“Do we have as much support for Africa as we would like? Not at all. But have we given up? Certainly not,” Christopher said.

Still, the underlying themes of the secretary’s five-nation tour--to Mali, Ethiopia, Tanzania, South Africa and Angola--underscore the changing nature and approach of U.S.-Africa policy.

For half a century, Washington tried to cultivate client states and use financial incentives or superpower persuasion to sway Africa’s newly independent states to adopt or adapt Western solutions to their problems. Today, without an ideological competitor in Africa, the Clinton administration is more interested in a support role.

“We really seek African solutions to African problems,” Christopher told reporters.

That does not mean disengagement.

“We’re not saying to African leaders, ‘Go off and solve things by yourself’ or that ‘You’re on your own,’ ” a senior U.S. official said Tuesday. “We’re responding to an expressed desire for more responsibility.”

But the administration is clearly stressing self-reliance in dealing with political, economic and military problems within African subregions and nations.

Mali is a model. Since 1991, the West African state of 10 million people has made the transition to democracy, ending a 23-year military dictatorship. The new government opened markets and ended a sporadic, five-year conflict in the north. It is now demobilizing some rebels and integrating others into the army--with the help of a new, $1-million U.S. aid package. A series of local and national elections is due in 1997, for which Christopher on Tuesday announced $700,000 more for education and preparation programs.

“Mali’s success is the best response to those who claim Africa’s problems are insoluble,” Christopher said Tuesday after talks with Malian President Alpha Oumar Konare. “What’s been accomplished here sends a signal to all of Africa that where people are trusted to select their leaders and the leaders make the right choices, nations can avert crisis and begin to unlock their economic potential.”

But Mali is one of the more fortunate African countries. It had a benevolent general who decided to call elections. And it is due to receive $30 million in U.S. assistance this year--sixth among African recipients of American development aid. An additional 31 countries, many with larger populations and problems, get less. And many are far more economically and politically unstable.

Africa also has few other sources of help. Among developing countries, it attracted only 3% of foreign investment--compared with 20% to Latin American and 59% to East Asia and the Pacific, according to State Department figures.

U.S. trade with Africa has improved recently.

“We have here more trade with Africa now than we do with the countries of the former Soviet Union,” Christopher said. Two-way trade totaled $18 billion last year, a high. U.S. exports increased by 23% last year.

But most U.S. imports were oil-related and benefited only a few countries.

“There is a long, long way to go,” Christopher conceded.

Meanwhile, many of Africa’s problems are worsening. Its ability to feed itself, for example, fell between 1961 and 1995, the United Nations reports. Food production per capita dropped 12%; countries such as Zambia and Zaire--once breadbaskets for other states--can no longer feed themselves. And some of the richest countries are among the most troubled. In oil-rich Nigeria, Africa’s second-largest economy, per capita income today is a mere $260 annually--the same as it was in 1972 and a quarter less than it was in 1981, U.S. figures show.

President Clinton recently agreed to provide U.S. support for a multinational African crisis force that could be called up to deal with the humanitarian aspects of conflicts. Mali on Tuesday was among the first countries to agree in principle to participate, Christopher announced.

But the itinerary and agenda of America’s top envoy are as telling for the issues not receiving high priority.

Except for Angola, where Christopher will spend just hours, his visit is “soft,” say administration insiders who had hoped to see a more substantive itinerary dealing with some of the most volatile issues facing the continent.

In the mineral-rich giant Zaire, for example, U.S. officials admit that conditions are disintegrating. Zaire, in the belly of Africa, shares borders with nine countries. Political or social chaos there, possibly including secession of a key province or two, could easily be more destabilizing for all of Africa than any recent African crisis, U.S. specialists say.

They also warn of horrific conditions in Liberia, a nation founded by descendants of American slaves. Liberia has been shattered by six years of civil strife that has killed more than 150,000 people and displaced half of its 2.8 million people.

But in contrast to the Mideast, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Haiti and other troubled areas around the globe where U.S. negotiators have taken a role, the world’s only superpower has not raced to the fore to try to end Africa’s sorrows.

Instead, as John F. Hicks, assistant administrator for the Agency for International Development, told the Senate subcommittee on Africa in May: “We see two Africas emerging. One is moving ahead into the 21st century as responsible partners in the world community.” That includes the 23 countries that have held multi-party elections.

The other Africa, Hicks said, includes countries in crisis. And their suffering, he said, will continue to demand U.S. resources at a time when America’s spending overseas is under growing restraint.