U.S. Secretary of State Albright visits Africa

David F. Gordon

Overseas Development Council

Madeleine Albright has made her first visit to Africa as Secretary of State. Five years into the Clinton Administration, it's time to take new look at Africa.

Albright visited a continent in transition -- some of it peaceful, some not. For decades, Africa was used either as a pawn in the Cold War or as the poster child for famine relief. U.S. involvement meant securing access to Africa's raw materials, supplying limited amounts of foreign aid (often for the wrong reasons), sending food to feed the starving, and reluctantly taking part in eleventh-hour peacekeeping missions.

In the first Clinton Administration, there was much talk about taking Africa seriously, but little action. Risk avoidance was the rule, especially following the very public deaths of eighteen American soldiers in the streets of Mogadishu, Somalia, in October 1993. Foreign policy gurus like Michael Mandelbaum derided African engagement as mere "social work," not serious policy. Now a major rethinking of US-Africa relations seems to be underway and proponents of serious engagement with Africa are in the ascendance.

Policy discussion is shifting from the old paternalist bromides toward positive action. President Clinton's announcement of a new economic partnership with Africa meshes with congressional enthusiasm for an "Africa Growth and Opportunity Act," engaging a broad and unusual coalition ranging from Speaker Newt Gingrich on the right to Harlem's Congressman Charlie Rangel on the left. Rangel led a bipartisan Presidential mission, including both Administration trade officials and Members of Congress, "to those African nations undergoing an economic renaissance."

The private sector's rediscovery of Africa as the newest emerging market for deeper trade and investment is key to the continent's future stability. Africa's renewed economic reform, liberalized investment codes and new stock markets are making this continent increasingly attractive. Trade between the U.S. and Africa has been growing at nearly 20% per year in the last two years. Economic growth for the 35 African countries implementing significant economic reforms has topped five percent, with Ethiopia, Uganda and Cote d'Ivoire chugging along at closer to double that. While these are not Asian Tiger growth rates, they mark an important shift from the past two decades of African economic stagnation.

On the political front, violent struggle has given way to peace in Mozambique, South Africa, Mali, Ethiopia and Eritrea. Twenty-six African states held multi-party elections in the last two years. There is a new energetic cadre of African leaders on the world stage, beginning with South Africa's Nelson Mandela and UN Secretary General Kofi Annan and including Meles of Ethiopia, Konare of Mali, and Kagame of Rwanda. These new leaders rise above the "blame the West" mentality that so dominated Africa's approach to international politics since independence. They also reject the willingness of their predecessors to defer to those outside the continent for leadership on Africa's renewal.

And so the Albright mission was the first real test of the Clinton Administration's seriousness about Africa. The Administration said that the Secretary went to Africa not simply to "show the flag," but because of long-term U.S. strategic interest in the political and economic stability of the continent, especially in Central Africa. Specifically, the Secretary's focus was on the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is struggling to emerge from thirty years of corrupt rule by President Mobutu Sese Seko, in which the U.S. was a prominent backer.

The Congo lies at the geographical and geopolitical heart of the continent. It is on the cusp of the two Africas -- the one President Mandela calls the "renaissance", and the other the Africa of conflict. But as Laurent Kabila struggles to consolidate his government, he does so with his own soiled hands and serious questions about his allegiances -- inside and outside his country. Shaping a new American policy toward the Congo is an essential early test for the Clinton Administration and a signal of what we might expect elsewhere on the continent.

So far, the U.S. has focused almost entirely on investigations into ethnic massacres during the civil war. This is clearly a priority, but not the only one. The U.S. has too big a stake and too big an agenda in the Congo -- stability, economic and commercial policy and regional security arrangements all are key. Albright also faces a difficult funding issue -- what is the U.S. willing to spend to promote stability and reconstruction in the Congo? We hope that Albright brought with her to Kinshasa at least some ideas of how the U.S. will use its muscle to leverage international support for the new Congo.

Africa has been on the sidelines of post-Cold War foreign policy thinking for too long. What happens in the Congo, and what role the United States plays, will be a crucial sign of the Clinton Administration's strategic vision for Africa. It is for that reason that Albright's trip was so important.

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David F. Gordon is Senior Fellow and Director of the Program on U.S. Policy at the Overseas Development Council, a non-governmental international policy research institute in Washington, D.C..