US Presidential Election: Where Is Africa?

Virtually absent from debates in the United States, foreign policy seems to be the least of American concerns. However, Joe Biden has thought of the continent in his agenda.

Foreign policy does not usually figure prominently in American election campaigns. This is still the case today: Americans think first and foremost about the COVID-19 health crisis, the economic situation, race relations, the environment, and, of course, about the personalities of the two candidates.

The Absent Continent

Foreign policy was barely mentioned in the two debates. Relations with China, relations with North Korea, commercial and military treaties were all dispatched within a few minutes. Let’s not even bring up the continent, which was completely absent from the public debate.

So let us turn to the candidates’ platforms for information. Or rather “the” platform, one should say, because the only one available is Joe Biden’s. Donald Trump has no particular plan, apart from his reelection: “Reelect me so that everything stays the same as it is today,” is his message, in essence. He brags about his record but says nothing about what he will do if reelected. He probably doesn’t know. The Republican Party reprinted the 2016 platform before dumping it in the trash.

Biden and the Diaspora

The first important point of the Democrat’s agenda for Africa is the diaspora. He recognizes the significance of the community based in the United States — it numbers approximately 2 million people. It doubles every 10 years, and it represents one of the most dynamic immigrant groups in the country.

But in recent years many Africans have faced visa restrictions ordered by the Trump administration, especially people from Sudan, Somalia and Nigeria — those Muslim countries in the president’s cross hairs.

Biden promises to return to a more open policy, to family reunification; he wants to make it possible again to regularize illegal immigrants, and restore the asylum policy.

The Democratic presidential platform also mentions the health crisis, acknowledging that many Africans are “frontline workers” with jobs that are highly vulnerable to the virus, and promising medical coverage for them.

The pledge is worth what it’s worth, of course, but the mere fact, in a presidential platform, of specifically mentioning Africans, many of whom do not have American citizenship and are therefore not voters, is good news. People from the continent are not forgotten.

In Obama’s Footsteps

On the foreign policy side, the point is very general and in line with the continuation of the policy of the Obama administration, of which Biden was vice president. First, it is about a “respectful commitment” to Africa, a way of underscoring Trump’s indifference to the continent, the only one he has not visited.

We remember the insulting remarks made by the American president during a discussion of the protection of immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries, described as “shit hole countries” (comments reported by The Washington Post on Jan. 12, 2018, and which Trump has not denied). On the State Department side, no senior diplomat was appointed to the Bureau of African Affairs until July 2018.

In October 2018, Melania Trump did make a one-week trip to four African countries (Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt), but she refrained from any political statements, preferring to stress education and humanitarian aid.

In addition, two controversies tarnished her trip: first, a photo shoot with elephant calves in Kenya, during which she affirmed her commitment to the preservation of wild animals, an occasion to recall that her two stepsons (Eric and Donald Jr.) practice elephant hunting, and her husband facilitated the importation of hunting trophies into the United States.

Then again in Kenya, she wore a hat strongly reminiscent of a colonial helmet, which was out of place, to say the least. A few days after Trump’s tourist trip, her husband received an African president, the Nigerian Muhammadu Buhari, for the first time at the White House.

If Trump has no interest in Africa and considers the continent to be negligible, certain continuities can be highlighted, as they were by the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential think tank that publishes the prestigious journal Foreign Affairs, devoted to economic issues.

“Congress Has Contained the Damage”

The aim of the “Prosper Africa” plan is thus to facilitate American companies’ projects on the continent, but Trump does not seem to take the slightest interest in it.

For its part, Congress has contained the damage by opposing the administration’s drastic cuts in development aid. So a semblance of African politics has been maintained by parliamentarians and some seasoned diplomats like Tibor Nagy.

Faced with this meager record, Biden proposes to restore diplomatic relations with African governments and the African Union; he wishes to reaffirm the United States’ commitment to democracy, economic development, peace and security. He also indicates that the diplomatic service, especially with regard to specialists on Africa, will have to reflect the diversity of the American population. And he wants to revive the Young African Leaders Initiative, a program launched in 2010 by Barack Obama, allowing several hundred young Africans to stay in American universities.

On the whole, it is “restoration” that one can speak of in connection with Biden’s projects on Africa: There is no striking innovation, but a cautious desire to return to the African policy led by Trump’s predecessors. And, perhaps equally important, doing this while respecting Africa and Africans.