Albright’s Africa Tour to Highlight U.S. Goals

After almost half a century in which U.S. policy treated Africa as little more than a pawn on the Cold War chessboard, President Clinton promised a new approach to the world’s poorest continent, stressing American assistance to promote democracy, free-market economic principles and peaceful resolution of conflicts.

Seven years into his administration, there is little doubt that Clinton, who paid a rare presidential visit to Africa last year, has raised the profile of the continent as a focus of U.S. foreign policy.

But as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright this week makes her third trip to Africa, the results are decidedly mixed.

University and think tank experts say the transition to free markets has advanced remarkably in many African countries. But, disappointingly, it has made very little impact on the continent’s chronic poverty.

And the continent is racked by wars raging without any hint of U.S. intervention, mocking the Kosovo-developed “Clinton doctrine” of military action to stop gross violations of human rights. At least four wars in Africa appear to meet all the criteria Clinton outlined in explaining the reasons for last spring’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombing of Yugoslavia.

“There was great expectation that once the Cold War was over, we could focus on Africa’s own problems on their own merits,” said Pauline H. Baker, an Africa specialist who is president of the Fund for Peace, a Washington think tank.

Instead, she said, “Africa has been dealt another cruel hand of rising expectations because there was a lot of hoopla in this country about putting Africa on the agenda, and then nothing happened. I see a lot of talk and I see visits, but I don’t see a lot of action.”

Clinton administration officials insist that there clearly has been progress, especially in substituting market principles for Africa’s long and unhappy experiment with socialism. If the Senate approves a House-passed trade bill eliminating tariffs on most goods from sub-Saharan Africa and encouraging U.S. investment, they say, the results could be even more dramatic.

The State Department’s top Africa expert, Assistant Secretary of State Susan E. Rice, said Albright’s current visit is “intended to advance our key policy goals in Africa.” Those goals, she said, include accelerating Africa’s integration into the global economy, working with Africans to prevent and resolve conflicts, and promoting democracy and human rights.

In addition, Rice said, the administration wants to “work with Africans to combat threats to our mutual security,” such as crime, terrorism, narcotics, weapons proliferation, AIDS and other diseases and environmental degradation.

Officials said no signed agreements are expected, however.

Albright embarked Sunday on a weeklong trip to Guinea, Sierra Leone, Mali, Nigeria, Kenya and Tanzania. It is an unusually gritty itinerary, covering countries that highlight many of the continent’s troubles.

In Sierra Leone, for instance, combatants signed a peace agreement in July to end an eight-year civil war that had sparked some of the worst human rights violations on the planet. But the country is still considered extremely dangerous, and the possibility of renewed warfare remains high.

On her 1997 trip to Africa, Albright was careful to avoid Nigeria to protest the undemocratic regime in the continent’s most populous country. Now, political conditions are far more open, and U.S. officials say Albright wants to celebrate the changes and encourage further liberalization in Nigeria, which has sufficient oil reserves to make it a potential economic heavyweight.

On June 8, 1998, Gen. Sani Abacha, probably the most brutal and corrupt of a succession of military dictators who had run Nigeria for more than 15 years, died of a heart attack. His successors turned power over to an elected government this year. The new president is Olusegun Obasanjo, a military ruler in the late 1970s who now says he is committed to civilian rule.

Some human rights groups say the new government remains repressive, although on a far smaller scale than the Abacha regime. But the Clinton administration sees signs of progress.

“Obasanjo is doing and saying all the right things,” said one administration official. “We want to encourage him. Nigeria has emerged from the era of dictatorship. It could very well be a bellwether for the rest of Africa.”

I. William Zartman, an Africa expert at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, agreed that Obasanjo is probably “the only one that can start Nigeria on a path that it can be proud of.”

Zartman said Obasanjo is far more solid than the leaders of Uganda, Rwanda, Ethiopia, Eritrea and Congo, all of whom Albright and Clinton once hailed as the new leadership of an increasingly democratic Africa. All of those countries are now embroiled in war, and Albright left them off this week’s itinerary.

George Ayittey, a professor of economics at American University in Washington, said the administration has placed too much emphasis on the personality of African leaders.

“In Africa, the Abraham Lincoln wannabes are just robber barons who were plundering the economy,” said Ayittey, a native of Ghana. “A better approach would be for the Clinton administration to shift from leaders to institutions. The critical institutions are an independent central bank, an independent judiciary, an independent and free media, and neutral and professional armed forces. The secretary of State can visit Africa as many times as she wants, but the focus should be on institution-building.”

Ayittey said Mali is the only country on Albright’s schedule that fulfills all four criteria.

Although administration officials don’t apologize for supporting individual African leaders, they insist that their primary focus is on building democratic institutions and promoting trade and investment. In an era when Congress is cutting foreign aid to the bone, officials say, U.S. and European private investment may be the only way to promote economic development, not only in Africa but across the Third World.

Walter H. Kansteiner III, a White House expert on Africa during the Bush administration, applauded efforts to promote trade and investment in Africa. He said it is as much good business for U.S. corporations as it is for African countries.

“Investment in Africa probably brings a better return than investment in any other region of the world,” Kansteiner said. “Trade with Africa is still small but growing dramatically.”

But Eve Sandberg, an Africa expert at Oberlin College in Ohio, questioned the administration’s approach.

“The emphasis has been on finding ways for U.S. businesses to trade with Africa,” she said. “We have to find a way to make that a two-way street. If they are serious about promoting reciprocal trade, then they have to find a way to return to some of the core foreign aid programs--training, scholarships, transfers of technology and support for large development programs.”