No free trip to Washington DC
The PUNCH newspaper must be on the “bad boys” list in Aso Rock by now. Imagine, President Goodluck Jonathan and his aides were to travel to the United States of America for a summit, and on August 3, 2014, the newspaper had boldly announced: “Summit: US to test Jonathan’s aides, others for Ebola”. Trust that some state officials might take offence at the suggestion that they would be subjected to such an “indignity”. But wasn’t that what the US officials had vowed to do? It means the newspaper took Americans at their word. And it’s just as well because the US is one country where state officials say what they mean, and put energy and resources into implementing what they say; and they are proactive, too, where the safety of their citizens is at issue.
Or, were there no officials in some other countries where officials had looked on for weeks, after Ebola Virus Disease was announced to have killed people in Liberia, until a plane dumped a Liberian at an airport where he contaminated innocent citizens before health officials began to run around? It shows the understanding of some state officials as to why they hold public office. That apart, Nigerians would have loved to see more of a certain personality on TV after he arrived Washington DC for the US-Africa Leaders Summit, but for the sea of other African leaders in attendance. They were so many it would have been impossible for Nigerians to locate a trademark hat, if not for Nigerian journalists who had sweated to search and focus their camera on President Goodluck Jonathan. Filming him side by side with President Barack Obama was another issue, because the host had chosen to talk to the crowd rather than meet each African leader. Anyway, the summit was for the good of Africa; wasn’t that what the host said, although he didn’t hide the real purpose?
It’s been more than a decade since the US began to lose to China in Africa. In that time, the Yankees and their Western allies did more of accusing China of stripping the continent of its natural resources than they took actions themselves, and that was because they had other problems to contend with. Now, two major issues make America look Africa’s way: The potential for more economic growth, and a US aid programme that had delivered little to recipients. “We have now mobilised a total of $26bn for Africa”, Obama had said to the continent’s leaders at the summit. Then, he added that, “We do want to help Africans trade with each other. Because the market with the greatest potential is often in the market right next door.” He didn’t hide the other intention behind all of that: “We want Africa to buy American goods, and vice-versa”. His Secretary of Commerce thinks of America first, then connects all of it to Africa: “Investing in Africa will create jobs in North Carolina…Investing in Africa would support workers in California, and strengthen the health of patients in Nigeria” because a US company had signed an MoU to “construct a state of the art cancer institute in Ibadan.” With the US companies alone promising $14bn investment in Africa, it’s a shift in the US foreign policy approach to the continent. Previously, aid was the tool. But by focusing on private investment, the US acknowledges that change is better driven within the continent itself. This benefits the US too because the government no longer enjoys citizens’ trust to continue to pour taxpayers’ money into aid-programmes that don’t effect real change.
Yet, the framework under which African leaders undertook the visit to Washington DC mustn’t be forgotten. It mustn’t, even though no one on the continent including the African Union that is aware of the larger picture seems interested in explaining to Africans the connection between the summit and its strategic framework to develop Africa. In fact, 24 hours after the summit, the first 50 sites on Google with any meaningful comment on the event were from the West. The US-Africa Summit may be the first, but from Africa’s position, the framework under which it happened dates back to 2002, a year when the AU designed the framework for intensive development of the continent called the New Economic Partnership for African Development. Since 2004, there has been the Africa-India Partnership; Africa-South America; Africa-Turkey, and later on in 2006 there was the African-Japan summit. China is not left out. All of that had happened at a time the US didn’t take interest in Africa, a time development partners from the West had the habit of offering Africa what they thought it needed; in the event, China offered Africa what it said it needed in the very area of its need, and in a down-to-earth kind of way, stripped of all distant and cold diplomatic niceties. Now, it’s within the framework of NEPAD and other AU development strategies that African leaders welcome the US back, while putting on the table what they need from foreign partners under the umbrella of Agenda 2063. This background is needed because this writer has observed that even in Nigeria, officials don’t deliberately break these issues down for citizens to connect with, although the President’s men regularly announce wherever their principal is going.
Well, officials may not have explained to Nigerians why their leader had to join other African leaders to meet with Obama in Washington DC, but Nigerians out there took their President to task. Even in a situation where he had addressed foreign businessmen as well as Nigerians in the Diaspora, the earliest question he was made to respond to was about holding credible elections in Nigeria. The President’s response is reserved for another day. But he had talked about education too, housing needs in Nigeria, adding that ideas for the way forward in developing Nigeria were welcome from anyone in the Diaspora. Such idealists would have to put their dreams on paper and submit to relevant Nigerian agencies though. It’s cool to hear the President say that, except that the last time some indefatigable Nigerians submitted an idea to a government agency under the Federal Ministry of Culture about packaging Nigeria’s football team for Brazil 2014, and Nigerian banks had parted with funds for the project, a female Director-General in charge of the agency and the fund had allegedly collected signed agreement papers on the deal from the indefatigable Nigerians and chew them while the whole world watched in Brazil. Her type belongs to the class of state officials that make patriotic Nigerians lose the zeal to come forward.
Alright, at the summit in Washington DC. The Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, wasn’t missing in action. Of course, she talked about money: “I think it’s quite a good summit for us”, she had said to reporters, counting effortlessly innumerable businesses that the US companies promised to bring to Nigeria. And didn’t everyone see “Nigeria’s big boy”, Aliko Dangote, on the podium? He talked about how to make real money in Africa, naturally. In all of this, what foreigners who regularly extend summit invitations to Africa really want shouldn’t be forgotten. And they will continue to invite because where flowers are, there the bees will gather. All summits are similar in that they are wrapped in “co-operation” and “equal partnership” packages, even though they come down to money and promised investment: The EU has given $39bn; Japan, $32bn; China, $20bn; India, $5bn; but what France promised is unquantified, as well as that of the Arab nations, all of that in the last three years alone.
Every “co-operation” and “equal partnership” package comes with a tag, and that shouldn’t be forgotten too. From the slave trade era to the age of globalisation, each of these outsiders’ surge of interest in Africa has always been more to the advantage of those that initiate it, and who already has their targets neatly calculated to the last dollar. If outsiders see what they want in Africa and have been smart enough to always get it, it means it’s a world for the smart. African leaders and their aides wouldn’t return from Washington DC, slap backs for having been on the trip to Yankees’ country and thereafter go to sleep, would they? Any continent would have to be smarter than that if it must beat smart folk in their own game.
The PUNCH newspaper must be on the “bad boys” list in Aso Rock by now. Imagine, President Goodluck Jonathan and his aides were to travel to the United States of America for a summit, and on August 3, 2014, the newspaper had boldly announced: “Summit: US to test Jonathan’s aides, others for Ebola”. Trust that some state officials might take offence at the suggestion that they would be subjected to such an “indignity”. But wasn’t that what the US officials had vowed to do? It means the newspaper took Americans at their word. And it’s just as well because the US is one country where state officials say what they mean, and put energy and resources into implementing what they say; and they are proactive, too, where the safety of their citizens is at issue.
Or, were there no officials in some other countries where officials had looked on for weeks, after Ebola Virus Disease was announced to have killed people in Liberia, until a plane dumped a Liberian at an airport where he contaminated innocent citizens before health officials began to run around? It shows the understanding of some state officials as to why they hold public office. That apart, Nigerians would have loved to see more of a certain personality on TV after he arrived Washington DC for the US-Africa Leaders Summit, but for the sea of other African leaders in attendance. They were so many it would have been impossible for Nigerians to locate a trademark hat, if not for Nigerian journalists who had sweated to search and focus their camera on President Goodluck Jonathan. Filming him side by side with President Barack Obama was another issue, because the host had chosen to talk to the crowd rather than meet each African leader. Anyway, the summit was for the good of Africa; wasn’t that what the host said, although he didn’t hide the real purpose?
It’s been more than a decade since the US began to lose to China in Africa. In that time, the Yankees and their Western allies did more of accusing China of stripping the continent of its natural resources than they took actions themselves, and that was because they had other problems to contend with. Now, two major issues make America look Africa’s way: The potential for more economic growth, and a US aid programme that had delivered little to recipients. “We have now mobilised a total of $26bn for Africa”, Obama had said to the continent’s leaders at the summit. Then, he added that, “We do want to help Africans trade with each other. Because the market with the greatest potential is often in the market right next door.” He didn’t hide the other intention behind all of that: “We want Africa to buy American goods, and vice-versa”. His Secretary of Commerce thinks of America first, then connects all of it to Africa: “Investing in Africa will create jobs in North Carolina…Investing in Africa would support workers in California, and strengthen the health of patients in Nigeria” because a US company had signed an MoU to “construct a state of the art cancer institute in Ibadan.” With the US companies alone promising $14bn investment in Africa, it’s a shift in the US foreign policy approach to the continent. Previously, aid was the tool. But by focusing on private investment, the US acknowledges that change is better driven within the continent itself. This benefits the US too because the government no longer enjoys citizens’ trust to continue to pour taxpayers’ money into aid-programmes that don’t effect real change.
Yet, the framework under which African leaders undertook the visit to Washington DC mustn’t be forgotten. It mustn’t, even though no one on the continent including the African Union that is aware of the larger picture seems interested in explaining to Africans the connection between the summit and its strategic framework to develop Africa. In fact, 24 hours after the summit, the first 50 sites on Google with any meaningful comment on the event were from the West. The US-Africa Summit may be the first, but from Africa’s position, the framework under which it happened dates back to 2002, a year when the AU designed the framework for intensive development of the continent called the New Economic Partnership for African Development. Since 2004, there has been the Africa-India Partnership; Africa-South America; Africa-Turkey, and later on in 2006 there was the African-Japan summit. China is not left out. All of that had happened at a time the US didn’t take interest in Africa, a time development partners from the West had the habit of offering Africa what they thought it needed; in the event, China offered Africa what it said it needed in the very area of its need, and in a down-to-earth kind of way, stripped of all distant and cold diplomatic niceties. Now, it’s within the framework of NEPAD and other AU development strategies that African leaders welcome the US back, while putting on the table what they need from foreign partners under the umbrella of Agenda 2063. This background is needed because this writer has observed that even in Nigeria, officials don’t deliberately break these issues down for citizens to connect with, although the President’s men regularly announce wherever their principal is going.
Well, officials may not have explained to Nigerians why their leader had to join other African leaders to meet with Obama in Washington DC, but Nigerians out there took their President to task. Even in a situation where he had addressed foreign businessmen as well as Nigerians in the Diaspora, the earliest question he was made to respond to was about holding credible elections in Nigeria. The President’s response is reserved for another day. But he had talked about education too, housing needs in Nigeria, adding that ideas for the way forward in developing Nigeria were welcome from anyone in the Diaspora. Such idealists would have to put their dreams on paper and submit to relevant Nigerian agencies though. It’s cool to hear the President say that, except that the last time some indefatigable Nigerians submitted an idea to a government agency under the Federal Ministry of Culture about packaging Nigeria’s football team for Brazil 2014, and Nigerian banks had parted with funds for the project, a female Director-General in charge of the agency and the fund had allegedly collected signed agreement papers on the deal from the indefatigable Nigerians and chew them while the whole world watched in Brazil. Her type belongs to the class of state officials that make patriotic Nigerians lose the zeal to come forward.
Alright, at the summit in Washington DC. The Finance Minister, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, wasn’t missing in action. Of course, she talked about money: “I think it’s quite a good summit for us”, she had said to reporters, counting effortlessly innumerable businesses that the US companies promised to bring to Nigeria. And didn’t everyone see “Nigeria’s big boy”, Aliko Dangote, on the podium? He talked about how to make real money in Africa, naturally. In all of this, what foreigners who regularly extend summit invitations to Africa really want shouldn’t be forgotten. And they will continue to invite because where flowers are, there the bees will gather. All summits are similar in that they are wrapped in “co-operation” and “equal partnership” packages, even though they come down to money and promised investment: The EU has given $39bn; Japan, $32bn; China, $20bn; India, $5bn; but what France promised is unquantified, as well as that of the Arab nations, all of that in the last three years alone.
Every “co-operation” and “equal partnership” package comes with a tag, and that shouldn’t be forgotten too. From the slave trade era to the age of globalisation, each of these outsiders’ surge of interest in Africa has always been more to the advantage of those that initiate it, and who already has their targets neatly calculated to the last dollar. If outsiders see what they want in Africa and have been smart enough to always get it, it means it’s a world for the smart. African leaders and their aides wouldn’t return from Washington DC, slap backs for having been on the trip to Yankees’ country and thereafter go to sleep, would they? Any continent would have to be smarter than that if it must beat smart folk in their own game.
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