Johannesburg - In history, foreign policy after the Second World War was mainly focused on the Cold War, a term describing the tension between the United States and the former Soviet Union.
Fast-forward to the 21st century, the Cold War, essentially an ideological war for the hearts and minds of people in a post-war situation, appears close to finding another lease of life against a backdrop of another war – the ongoing attempted Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Suggestions of the resumption of the Cold War come ahead of this week’s indaba when US President Joe Biden continues the charm offensive for the hearts and minds of the leadership of the African continent kickstarted in August 2022 by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during a visit which analysts described as an attempt to stymie Chinese and Russian influence in the region. He failed.
Biden is to have another bite of the cherry when he plays host to African leaders for a US-Africa Leaders’ Summit in Washington between 13-15 December. Inevitably, this becomes less about Africa – and more about the US foreign policy first alluded to by John Bolton, former US national security advisor to Donald Trump, in 2018, admitting that the US approach to Africa was premised on its allergy to the growing influence of China over the continent.
Many academics and foreign affairs experts insist that Africa must preside over its future than be instructed on how to conduct its affairs on the world stage. Many will tell you that Africa has long been a stepchild in global affairs, under-represented at the United Nations without a permanent seat on its security Council and generally being nudged into kowtowing to the demands of dollars and their donors in the name of democracy.
The US and the West have drawn up alliances and treaties with nations across all continents except Africa. These include the Association of South-east Asian Nations, which is a political and economic union of 10 member states in South-east Asia (ASEAN), the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Nato), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, which is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two North American or the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), creating a free trade zone for Mexico, Canada, and the United States.
Africa gets a meet and greets and derisory dollars? But increasingly, there is push-back against this treatment of Africa and other powers treated similarly.
Professor Adekeye Adebajo, a professor and senior research fellow at the University of Pretoria’s Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship, spoke recently on the conflict in Ukraine giving birth to another Cold War amid debate over attempts by African, Asian, and Latin American states to revive a new “non-alignment” to avoid becoming embroiled in great power “proxy wars”.
During this debate on Africa's involvement in the United Nations Security Council, there were loud calls for the West to end its double standards in cases such as Palestine and Western Sahara and to uphold the rules-based international order — not only in Ukraine but also in Iraq.
A high-level policy dialogue hosted by the Centre for the Advancement of Scholarship (CAS) and the Nordic Africa Institute (NAI) on 24 October 2022 met to discuss “Fifteen diplomats on a powder keg: Africa and the UN Security Council.”
The meeting involved senior diplomats, heads of UN agencies, civil society, scholars, and students who assessed how the ten elected non-permanent members of the UN Security Council have worked to strengthen Africa’s security architecture. Currently, throughout Africa, conflicts are ongoing in the eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic (CAR), Chad, Mali, Guinea-Bissau, Somalia, Sudan, and Mozambique, with 70% of the security council’s deliberations typically focusing on Africa, to which 85% of the UN’s 75,000 peacekeepers are deployed.
Adebajo notes that Biden did issue a call for the expansion of the UN Security Council to bring in permanent representation from Africa, Latin America, and elsewhere. But this is yet to become a reality. What does Biden’s meeting with African heads mean for the continent? The US will have you believe it is about “shared values to foster new economic engagement, advance peace, security, and good governance, and reinforce the commitment to democracy, human rights, and civil society.”
With President Ramaphosa having completed a royal visit, indeed, cosying up to Uncle Sam would be natural while maintaining the country’s approach towards multilateralism, a focal point in DIRCO’s foreign policy in its engagements with organisations such as the United Nations and the G20, South Africa is committed to maintaining the objectives of Brazil-Russia-India-China-SA (BRICS) partnership to enhance the growth and development of not only South Africa but Africa as a whole.
The BRICS partnership was critical for the country’s post-Covid-19 recovery. According to the Brookings Institute, while Biden is committed to renewing democracy, the influence of the US as a superpower on the African continent has been on the wane. Between 2017 and 2018, two-way trade between the US and Africa increased from $55.4 billion to $61.8 billion. During this same period, bilateral trade between China and Africa increased from $155 billion to $185 billion.
Therefore, one can understand the US desire to strike up a bromance with Africa at a time of a significant realignment of global forces, especially with the war in Ukraine, a current catalyst to reign in friends against China and Russia. In a visit to South Africa in August this year, the US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken outlined a reset of Washington’s relationship with the continent.
Blinken outlined what were US priorities for Africa - democracy, investment, security, countering global warming, and clean energy. He appeared mindful, however, of the sensitivities and even anger among Africans at the previous Trump administration’s approach to the continent as “shithole” countries and said Washington would not treat democracy “as an area where Africa has problems, and the United States have solutions” but recognised the common challenges to tackle together as equals.”
Although they had a harmonious get-together, Naledi Pandor, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, responded bluntly. She accused the West of taking a patronising and bullying attitude towards Africa. She made it clear that South Africa had different views from the US on Ukraine, China, Israel, and the Palestinians.
She said South Africa had experienced pressure from some in the West to align with its policy on Ukraine. Proverbially speaking, China will be the elephant in the room at next week’s US-Africa summit. Africa must decide, however, how it wants to play premised on the fact that the BRICS partnership has been a boom for the continent.
Since 2003, the annual influx of Chinese foreign direct investment (FDI) to Africa has grown from $74.8 million in 2003 to a staggering $5.4 billion in 2018. China’s FDI to Africa decreased in 2019 to US$2.7 billion, but despite Covid, it rose to US$4.2 billion in 2020. China has created several million jobs on the continent.
A 2022 African Youth Survey revealed that 77% of African youth saw China as Africa's most influential foreign power. As the shake-up continues in the world’s geo-political affairs, the African continent can take its rightful place at the global table finally and not depict the caricature of Cinderella with a begging bowl.
Edwin Naidu is a journalist with Higher Education Media. The views expressed here are his own.