Obama’s African Ambition

In convening the first Africa-U.S. summit, which opened on Monday in Washington, Barack Obama committed an act that psychoanalysts will have a lot fun dissecting. Pre-occupied with the economic crisis and his domestic health care reform, the U.S. president was accused of having neglected the African continent during the entirety of his first term, as if this had been a way of forgetting his father a little, a brilliant Kenyan economist whom he only knew briefly. But in his decision to assemble a majority of the 54 African chiefs of state and governments in order to develop economic ties with Africa, we can almost envision a posthumous reconciliation with his father.

What’s at stake for Barack Obama is certainly more than a filial relationship. It’s an occasion to give Africa a unique opportunity to benefit from the dynamism of a first world economy. As if to show that his initiative isn’t a response to the advance of “Chinafrica,” the Democratic president re-iterated that participation in African development “is not a zero-sum game.” Between now and 2050, the population of Africa will double, and the growth of the middle class will become a formidable economic lever.

For Barack Obama, who declared in 2009 that the “blood of Africa” runs through his veins, it’s also a chance to leave his mark. His predecessors, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, each put into practice emblematic programs whose positive effects we see to this day: a law — the African Growth and Opportunity Act — which reduced import taxes for some 40 African countries and an aid plan — the Clinton Global Initiative — to fight AIDS. In 2013, Barack Obama had already launched a $7.8 billion program, Power Africa, to double access to electricity in Sub-Saharan Africa, and another initiative aimed at training the elite of tomorrow. But it wasn’t sufficient. A dozen African countries are still very repressive. Governing deficits and the absence of solid infrastructures on the continent have remained important obstacles. In Washington, the debacle in South Sudan, carried by American baptismal fonts, has left a bitter taste. The efforts necessary to control a Libya that is adrift did not follow the overthrow of the Libyan Moammar Gadhafi.

The summit in Washington realizes Obama’s foreign policy aspirations, as well as addressing the “pivot to Asia.” He’s making the economy the weapon of the 20th century. If the Democratic president wants to go down in history, he has to make sure that the U.S. opening to Africa is just as sincere as it is sustainable.