This is the fourth of a four-part series exploring U.S. President Barack Obama’s upcoming U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit Aug. 4-6 in Washington, D.C. Part four asks whether the summit is a risky undertaking for the White House. Part three showed how energy is a big issue at the summit; Part two looked at side events associated with the summit; and Part one illustrated the issues and events surrounding the summit.
The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit Aug. 4-6 will focus on trade and investment by bringing nearly 50 heads of state together with a couple of hundred American corporate leaders in the largest gathering of African leadership in the U.S. at one time.
Indeed, the Summit offers a significant opportunity to enhance U.S.-Africa relationships – something the Administration has been moving towards during the President’s second term and announced the Summit during a visit to Africa last summer.
According to the Brookings Institute, the summit “provides an opportunity for the Obama administration to open a new chapter in U.S-Africa relations, moving from interaction on the bilateral level to a continent-wide engagement.”
“The upcoming summit provides access to nearly all of the leaders of Africa, especially small and infrequently visited nations, and bilateral meetings help to instill confidence and credibility in United States. This is a diplomatic and symbolic opportunity that should not be missed,” writes Amadou Sy, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institute Africa Growth Initiative.
But as the Summit has been approaching, there has been a flurry of Op-Ed articles – both from critics and supporters – raising concerns and giving advice as to how the President can make the Summit really work.
“They started out, frankly, in a not so great way because they basically were saying to heads of state ‘save the date,’ a save the date notice like you and I would get for somebody’s birthday party,” former Connecticut Congressman Toby Moffett told AFKInsider.
“I think that was a bad start, but I think they’ve recovered from that,” said Moffett, who is currently a Senior Adviser at the national law firm Mayer Brown and has over 20 years of experience representing African countries, companies and non-government organizations.
In a June 9 Op-Ed in U.S. News and World Report,Steven Hayes, President and CEO of the Corporate Council on Africa noted that the Summit “is not without significant risks and challenges, for this summit will be like none the African leaders have ever experienced.”
“We talk about risk for the President, I guess the connotation is of political risk and he doesn’t really have any political risk,” former Congressman Moffett told AFKInsider. “Let’s suppose it was really a disaster, what would be the political fallout, would it affect the Senate races that we have to win; the Senate seats that we on the democratic side have to hold – I doubt it.”
Leading up to the Summit there has been some comparison of the White House event with the three well established Africa summits hosted each by China, the European Union and Japan.
Of course comparing to the other summits – which have had plenty of time to work out the kinks – is unfair at this point with the enormous undertaking of putting on a “first” Summit.
“That’s right, they’ve been doing it for so long and no (one) has ever brought this many heads of state to the U.S. for any purpose and it’s not easy,” Moffett told AFKInsider.
Recently, the Brookings Institute’s Africa Growth Initiative reviewed the components of three longstanding Africa summits in China, the European Union and Japan. In a June report, Brookings pointed out some of the key differences in White House’s first U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit.
According to Brookings, Japan’s Tokyo International Conference for African Development started in 1993 and has met every five years since. China’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and the E.U.-Africa summit both started in 2000, with China’s meeting every three years while the E.U.-Africa summit has met three times.
The comparisons have raised issues that some Administration critics feel could de-rail the Summit.
No One-on-One Meetings
Critics are already questioning the success of the Summit based on the absence of one-on-one meetings with President Obama.
“I don’t think that he’s planning on doing one-on-one White House meetings with them, no, but the anticipation is that he’s going to spend most of the day with them and the evening before, so there will be a lot of time for him to have interactions with them,” a State Department official told AFKInsider.
“I wish that he would have some one-on-ones, which is very out of protocol frankly and it irritates some presidents,” Hayes told AFKInsider.
Nearly every African head of state met the Chinese leadership one-on-one during their last summit. Japan followed suite, giving each of the invited African leaders a 15-minute meeting with Japan’s Prime Minister over a three-day period in June 2013.
“But this is the United States, and they will come and they will access and that’s why I said it was a ‘high risk Summit’ because this is really not normal protocol and we’re not terribly protocol-conscious country either. I’m not saying that as a criticism, it’s just the nature of the U.S.,” Hayes told AFKInsider.
“So, we’ll see. I hope there are not repercussions from it, it’s important to succeed and I think we’re going to find out.”
“There’s very little bilateral stuff here and the Administration, I think rightly, has to take the position that they couldn’t do a lot of one-on-ones,” Moffett told AFKInsider, noting that move will keep anyone from going home disappointed.
In fact, the president could find himself in the company of all types of leaders—the good, the bad and the ugly – from the U.S. government’s perspective.
“These leaders know, and a lot of other people know, the U.S. is way behind in several areas regarding Africa. And so they don’t expect the kind of reception that you might get elsewhere, where countries are much more savvy about Africa,” says Moffett.
The Brookings Institute suggests the President should at least meet bilaterally “with the leaders of with the African Union and the Regional Economic Communities.”
Un-Invited Backlash?
The U.S. has invited 48 out of the 54 countries in Africa, but has excluded the Central African Republic, Egypt, Eritrea, Guinea Bissau, Sudan and Zimbabwe from the party because they are not in good standing with the African Union or the United States.
This is not without precedent: China’s Africa summit does not invite African leaders that recognize Taiwan as a sovereign nation, which includes Burkina Faso, São Tomé and Príncipe and Swaziland.
Early in 2014, the European Union faced a potential backlash – though it never came to pass – for its summit invitation list. Ahead of the European Union event, the African Union called for a boycott of the summit after hearing that Morocco, not a member of the AU, was invited while Sudan – an A.U. member – was excluded due to alleged human rights abuses.
Critics claim the U.S. could potentially face similar challenges and questions have been raised as to whether some countries will “self-exclude” because of protocol sensitivities towards those countries that were not invited.
“There was some talk about that, but I don’t expect that will happen,” Corporate Council on Africa’s Hayes told AFKInsider.
One of the recommendations by the Brookings Institute in June was: “If the United States cannot invite a country’s leader for political reasons, it should strive to have at least some representation at the forum.”
Playing Catch-up?
The bottom line for critics is that with the Summit, the U.S. is simply playing catch-up with the countries that already have a foot-hold in the African economy.
Corporate Council on Africa’s Hayes thinks we are playing catch-up.
“We don’t even need to hem-and-haw about that, yea we are. And I think that the Administration is belatedly saying ‘hey wait a minute, Africa is more important and we need to be spending a lot more emphasis on this,” Hayes told AFKInsider.
“I don’t think we’re playing catch-up in any way,” a State Department official told AFKInsider. “We have a very long standing partnership with Africa and African nations and I think our relationship goes back a long time and we do a variety of different things with different partners.”
“I mean let’s face it; Africa’s been unmentioned most of the time in the U.S. Our corporations are way behind there; some of them are waking up and trying to catch up. Our government’s way behind, we don’t have people in the government that are really of Africa and understand Africa,” Moffett told AFKInsider.
While African leaders may be coming to Washington to engage with the U.S. administration on key economic and political issues, they won’t be walking away empty handed. According to the U.S. Commerce Department, Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker will announce at least $900 million in deals at the Summit to sweeten the pot.
“You can’t fake this, you can’t re-program money from existing programs and think these Africans leaders or people in the media are going to actually believe there was a big event,” former Congressman Moffett told AFKInsider.
In fact, misperception of these African leaders could cause problems at the Summit because “these are not your grandfather’s African leaders,” as Moffett wrote in a July 8 Huffington Post Op-Ed.
“I spend a lot of time in Africa and you find yourself with 32-year-olds running the country,” Moffett told AFKInsider. “My oldest daughter is the chief adviser to the chairman of a very big bank in Nairobi and she rarely sees Americans, she rarely talks to Americans.”
The real question is can the White House get the American CEOs attending the Summit to step up and invest in sub-Saharan Africa.
“Africa’s going on without us and that’s not a minor point here with regard to this Summit,” says Moffett.
“Africa is rising in many ways, particularly in terms of private sector investment,” notes Corporate Council on Africa’s Hayes. “But it’s still a high risk environment in many countries. So there is necessary caution.”
“I can tell you that I talk to big companies all the time and they say ‘no no no, we’re just not interested.’ Some of the biggest financial institutions in the world, and they say ‘no, we’re making money elsewhere.’ And so that’s why our lunch is getting eaten on a daily basis,” Moffett told AFKInsider.
Whether U.S. corporations show new interest in Africa or not, the Brookings Africa Growth Initiative’s Amadou Sy writes July 16 that“the main measure of success of the first summit between African leaders and the 44th U.S. president should be whether the United States can seize an unprecedented opportunity to build a strategy ‘together’ with Africa.”
“I would say this is a unique opportunity to talk to the leaders together about shared concerns and this is the first time we’ve done that on this scale,” a State Department official told AFKInsider. “We’re hoping that we can discuss some of the really important things that we face together with out African partners.”
“I don’t think it’s risky, this is more about the next ten to twenty years and getting the U.S. positioned and re-positioned in a much more substantial way than it is now. And so, we’ll see,” former Congressman Moffett told AFKInsider.