The US, the UK and Sub-Saharan Africa: Evaluating Past and Re-thinking Future Policies
By Knox Chitiyo
20 Dec 2006
Bush and Blair and their successors will also have to confront the reality that in some countries – for example, Uganda – economic growth has increased under authoritarian and indigenized rule. Africa will see an increasing number of indigenous political-economic systems which challenge the ‘formalist’ assumptions of the Western model. US and UK policy-makers will need to be able to discern coherence in what may initially appear to be a chaotic universe. As they reconfigure their global strategic alliances, Africa will remain a contested zone where political expediency and moral imperatives compete for resources. It is likely that the US and the UK will need to focus more on the spheres of support for humanitarian interventions in Africa, and conflict management. A rigid approach to governance would inevitably lead to three foreign policy choices on Africa, none of which are palatable from either end of the spectrum – punitive policies, disengagement or impotence. The US and the UK need to re-engage with the UN; and one way of pushing the process would be by better engaging with continental and regional institutions and policy-makers in Africa. As the ruling and opposition parties in both the US and the UK negotiate difficult transitions, so too will the parameters of their foreign policies change in Africa and elsewhere. If their policies in Africa are to have a more lasting impact and survive the fall-out from the ‘War on Terror’, then one can make a basic recommendation: ‘Africanize’ – in the true sense of the word – their policies on Africa. Such a fundamental shift in thinking would only constitute a beginning, but it would be a good start.
20 Dec 2006
Bush and Blair and their successors will also have to confront the reality that in some countries – for example, Uganda – economic growth has increased under authoritarian and indigenized rule. Africa will see an increasing number of indigenous political-economic systems which challenge the ‘formalist’ assumptions of the Western model. US and UK policy-makers will need to be able to discern coherence in what may initially appear to be a chaotic universe. As they reconfigure their global strategic alliances, Africa will remain a contested zone where political expediency and moral imperatives compete for resources. It is likely that the US and the UK will need to focus more on the spheres of support for humanitarian interventions in Africa, and conflict management. A rigid approach to governance would inevitably lead to three foreign policy choices on Africa, none of which are palatable from either end of the spectrum – punitive policies, disengagement or impotence. The US and the UK need to re-engage with the UN; and one way of pushing the process would be by better engaging with continental and regional institutions and policy-makers in Africa. As the ruling and opposition parties in both the US and the UK negotiate difficult transitions, so too will the parameters of their foreign policies change in Africa and elsewhere. If their policies in Africa are to have a more lasting impact and survive the fall-out from the ‘War on Terror’, then one can make a basic recommendation: ‘Africanize’ – in the true sense of the word – their policies on Africa. Such a fundamental shift in thinking would only constitute a beginning, but it would be a good start.
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