Trump is continuing the Obama's politics in Africa

Continuation of Clinton, Bush and Obama in Africa!

Both Trump and Tillerson also pledged continued military support for certain African nations that are facing attacks from “jihadist” guerrilla groups currently operating in ungoverned spaces in the Sahel region, as well as in Somalia in the Horn sub-region. This policy is a continuation of the initiative taken by President George W. Bush who established AFRICOM to serve as a single coordinated US combat command in order to support African militaries in anti-terrorist operations. In this effort, the United States now has approximately five thousand military personnel in Africa acting in supporting roles. In addition, Trump has pledged $65 million to support the G5 Sahel force comprising Mali, Mauritania, Niger, Chad, and Burkina Faso.

In addition to anti-terrorist support, the Trump administration is continuing all the significant projects initiated by his three predecessors.

In the last year of his administration, President Bill Clinton signed into law the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). This legislation, which gives most African exports duty-free entry to the United States, was extended to the year 2025 in 2015 by the Republican congressional majority. So far, the Trump Administration has looked upon AGOA positively, with the objective of negotiating free trade agreements with individual African countries—so much for Trump’s distrust of free trade.

President George W. Bush established the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) that reaches out to external experts in order to rate African countries with respect to the environment for private business, political freedom, and overall stability. African countries that receive high ratings receive large amounts of aid financing for major infrastructure projects. The MCC has been very popular in Africa, and Trump shows every sign of wanting to keep it. Equally important, President Bush established PEPFAR, a comprehensive program designed to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic that has had a devastating impact on the populations of thirty-five African nations. This program provides anti-viral treatment to millions of infected Africans, and also helped reduce the prevalence of the disease considerably through prevention programs. PEPFAR continues under the Trump Administration.

In September 2017, President Trump addressed a group of African heads of state in New York during the annual debate of the United Nations General Assembly. This initial message to Africa said that the U.S. would be happy to see Africa become wealthy, and that the U.S. government is available to encourage potential American investors. He urged African nations to improve the environment for the private sector. Of particular interest, the President did not impulsively declare that he would reverse everything that President Obama did in Africa.

In March 2018, during his goodwill visit, former Secretary Tillerson addressed the African Union in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. His message was the same as Trump’s: “Let’s work together to encourage investors, both international and African.”

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President Obama established two major programs that are highly effective in Africa: Power Africa and Feed the Future. Power Africa addresses Africa’s significant electric power deficit by helping African countries create conditions to attract private investments in power generation. Feed the Future has the objective of bringing modern agricultural technology and practices to the African farmer so that African nations will no longer have to spend most of their export earnings on importing food. As of April 2018, the Obama programs remain funded and in place.

The bottom line Is that U.S. policy toward Africa has been bipartisan and virtually unchanged since the early 1960s, when the majority of Europe’s African colonies gained their independence: promote economic development and avoid big power conflict. If anything has changed, it has been in the evolution of economic development policy. In the early 1960s, the U.S. felt confident that the foreign assistance bureaucracy could bring about major change in Africa. After much experimentation, U.S. policy has evolved to where African nations bear the major responsibility for creating an environment that attracts private investors, both foreign and domestic.

https://lobelog.com/trumps-africa-policy-is-a-continuation-of-clintons-bushs-and-obamas/

Africom’s Genesis

Three U.S. regional commands currently share responsibility for American security issues in Africa. The Europe Command is responsible for the largest swath of the continent: North Africa, West Africa (including the Gulf of Guinea), and central and southern Africa. The Central Command covers the Horn of Africa—including Somalia, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Kenya, Djibouti, and Sudan—as well as Egypt. The Pacific Command is responsible for Madagascar, the Seychelles, and the Indian Ocean area off the African coast.

Sub-Saharan Africa  United States Defense and Security

The Pentagon has floated plans for a unified command for over ten years. Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld convened a planning team for such a command in mid-2006, and in December, President Bush authorized its creation. The president announced the command in February 2007, stating that it “will enhance our efforts to bring peace and security to the people of Africa and promote our common goals of development, health, education, democracy, and economic growth in Africa.” Ambassador Robert G. Loftis, senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Political and Military Affairs and a member of the Africa Command transition team, says the command will promote “a greater unity of effort across the government.” He notes that aid to Africa under President Bush has tripled since 2001, but “if we don’t have security in Africa, a lot of that development assistance will not be helpful.”

The Feasibility of an Interagency Command

The recent upsurge in violence in the Horn of Africa clearly has the Pentagon focused on the threat that Somalia, long a festering realm of warlordism, could become a new base for al-Qaeda. However, the Pentagon stresses that Africom’s primary mission will be preventing “problems from becoming crises, and crises from becoming conflicts.” Rear Admiral Robert T. Moeller, head of the transition team charged with standing up the Africa Command, says Africom will work to enhance security cooperation, extend humanitarian assistance, build partner capacity, and perform limited kinetic military assistance. But he adds that the command’s mission statement is still in draft form, and will not be finalized until a commander is selected (probably later this year). It resembles the mission statement of other regional commands, but “the difference is that building partnerships is first and foremost of the strategies which is not necessarily the case with other commands,” says Ambassador Loftis.

The Pentagon calls Africom a “unifed combatant command,” meaning a command that combines military and civil functions. Though Africom will be led by a top-ranking four-star military general, unlike other regional commands, its deputy commander will be a State Department official. The current transition team of about sixty people—which is largely military—will form the core of Africom’s headquarters staff, but Moeller anticipates there will eventually be several hundred personnel when the command becomes operational in September 2008. Africom aims to bring together intelligence, diplomatic, health and aid experts. Staff will be drawn from all branches of the military, as well as USAID and the departments of state, agriculture, treasury, and commerce. These nonmilitary staff may be funded with money from their own departments as well as the DOD.

https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/us-africa-command-africom

Drone diplomacy

Trump seems to prefer military action over diplomacy by handing over the keys to the military generals in the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM). 

In January 2017, President Trump granted more powers to the CIA by authorising it to launch its own lethal attacks, therefore repealing the limit imposed by his predecessor Barack Obama on the spy agency’s operations.

In 2017, the American military doubled its air strikes in Africa, especially in Somalia where it conducted 31 air strikes compared to 15 in 2016. Consequently, 150 US military leaders and veterans have decried Trump’s increased military authorisation, arguing that “today’s crises do not have military solutions alone.”

Trump’s military-focused foreign policy has also paved the way for the resignation of some US diplomats in the State Department’s Africa Bureau as they accuse Trump of undoing the work they had done over the years.

The fact that about 6,000 US troops are based across the African continent and that Trump did not appoint an assistant secretary for Africa to oversee the continent, nor an ambassador to key countries, indicates his preferences for military over diplomacy. 

Reports indicate that “five of the eight most senior posts in the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs are vacant or filled by people in an acting capacity.”

Cuts in aid

Last year, President Trump proposed  slashing the budget for the State Department, the US Agency for International Development (USAID), the Millennium Challenge Corporation, and the Peace Corps.

Five out of the top ten recipients of US foreign aid are African nations – signalling that the region is the largest recipient of American aid, amounting to 32 percent of the total imbursements in 2015. 

In 2015 alone, the State Department and USAID provided more than $8 billion – including $717 million in response to the Ebola outbreak that killed more than 11,000 people throughout West Africa – in aid to 47 African states. This was mainly spent on security, good governance, job creation, combating malnutrition and diseases.

Nearly all of the  $533 million in new US aid, which Tillerson pledged during his visit to Africa, will be used for humanitarian emergencies to combat famine and food insecurity in certain conflict ridden states, such as Ethiopia, South Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria.

US aid plays a significant role in creating jobs in rural parts of the continent. However, Trump’s budget cuts towards Africa could derail these efforts. 

https://www.trtworld.com/opinion/the-trump-administration-is-restricting-itself-to-security-in-africa-16439