State Emissary, November 2017. Issue 1 2017 Edition | Page 18

SM | POLITICS
Africa's economic sectors remains unrealized, and the
continent's rising consumer class will increasingly
become a target demographic for American products.
Chinese companies have already heeded this lesson.
U.S. support in this sector also acts as a firewall
against the kind of mass migration that has
overwhelmed Europe in the past 18 months. While
many Africans flee their respective countries due to
conflict, political persecution, or natural disasters,
countless others are seeking economic opportunities
and hope to escape the often-high unemployment
rates in their native countries.
3. Reconcile national security interests with
democracy objectives
In his landmark speech to the Ghanaian Parliament in
2009, U.S. President Barack Obama declared his
presidential election, and the incoming President
Muhammadu Buhari noted the “vital” U.S. role in
supporting those elections.
But the new administration will have to answer hard
questions about how the U.S. balances its national
security interests on the continent with a professed
desire for strengthening African democracy and
governance. In Ethiopia, a key U.S. counter-terror ally
in the region, the government imposed a state of
emergency following widespread anti-government
protests, which came just a year after President
Obama lauded the country—in which no opposition
MPs hold seats in parliament and activists regularly
deride the constriction of political space—as a
democracy.
In Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC),
President Joseph Kabila is poised to stay in power
beyond the end of his constitutionally-mandated
term, creating the possibility of widespread unrest
and instability in central Africa. To DRC's east, the
tiny Great Lakes nation of Burundi remains beset by
political violence after the incumbent president stood
for an unpopular—and, as opponents argued,
unconstitutional—third term. If instability there
continues, Burundi could retract its important
contribution to the peacekeeping mission in Somalia.
The way forward
Obama will end his tenure as the first American
president of African descent, a powerful contribution
in itself, at least rhetorically, for U.S.-Africa relations.
His key accomplishments include setting up Power
Africa, the ambitious $7 billion plan to expand
electrification across Africa, and convening the first
U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit and two U.S.-Africa
Business Forums.
support for democracy and good governance in Africa,
remarking, “Africa doesn't need strongmen, it needs
strong institutions.” The Obama administration
subsequently made democracy and governance a
cornerstone of its Africa policy. Despite a number of
setbacks, the continent witnessed a key peaceful
democratic transition after Nigeria's country's 2015
16 | NOV. 2017
Trump the candidate paid little attention to Africa. In
speeches, he referred to the continent only in relation
to al-Qaeda's 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in
Kenya and Tanzania, and more recently he came under
fire for comments related to the large numbers of
Somali refugees in Minnesota, a state Hillary Clinton
later won.