Almost 15 years after Nelson Mandela took office in South Africa, the United States lacks a coherent Africa policy. There are pieces of such a policy. Support for the war against AIDS is now a bipartisan consensus, and both presidential candidates have pledged to focus on Darfur. Neither, however, has laid out a policy framework that can serve both African and American interests.

It is instructive that it was only last June that the U.S. government finally took Mandela and members of his party off the official list of terrorists. Still, the U.S. did aid the transition to democracy in South Africa in the 1990s. In recent years some other African issues have attracted attention, and activists have pressured Washington, D.C. to act.

On AIDS, the results have been significant, if inadequate. President Bill Clinton, whose administration was missing in action on AIDS in Africa, became an effective campaigner on the issue after leaving office.

President George W. Bush – whose USAID administrator initially dismissed anti-retroviral treatment for Africans as impractical, claiming that Africans cannot adequately tell time – now finds that the presidential AIDS program is one of the few accomplishments he can claim for history.

On other issues – conflict, human rights, debt, trade and development – the record is less inspiring. The Clinton administration shared the international failure to act against genocide in Rwanda. On Darfur, the Bush administration has offered heady rhetoric but little effective action. But generally, neither the Clinton nor Bush years provides a good model.

Today’s candidates

This record looms large today given the absence of new proposals from the candidates and the projected makeup of their foreign policy teams. John McCain’s Africa policy may well resemble the disastrous Reagan years, noted for U.S. collaboration with the apartheid South African regime and African dictators. One of McCain’s top strategists, Charles Black, was a lobbyist for Angola’s Jonas Savimbi and other U.S.-backed African warlords.

Meanwhile, Barack Obama’s most prominent advisers (veterans of the Clinton administration) include Anthony Lake, who presided over the failure to respond to Rwanda, and Susan Rice, who has proposed direct U.S. troop intervention in Darfur – a step which would almost certainly escalate the killing.

Neither candidate has criticized the disastrous Bush policy on Somalia, where it encouraged Ethiopian military intervention and worsened one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises.

Both have endorsed AFRICOM, a new military command that risks reinforcing an already over-militarized U.S. response to Africa. Opportunistic support for dictators continues, while crises and conflicts – some, such as in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, surpassing Darfur in casualties – are ignored.

With his openness to multilateral cooperation and his personal connections, Obama has the potential for crafting a constructive Africa policy. But without an alternative framework and active public pressure, the path of least resistance will likely follow narrow conceptions of U.S. national interests.

Anti-terrorism, Africa’s oil, and competition with China are all real concerns. But pursuing those goals without attending to Africa’s own needs would be self-defeating.

Guiding principles

A new policy must encompass the diversity of African countries and of U.S. interests. There are no magic formulas. Nevertheless, there are principles that should apply.

* Build on the example of the response to AIDS, both multilateral and bilateral, to address African needs – in health, education, food, economic infrastructure and the environment – with all countries paying their fair share.

* Open genuine dialogue about trade and development, instead of imposing rigid free-market policies biased in favor of rich countries.

* Minimize bilateral military involvement in Africa, which risks sucking the U.S. into local conflicts, in favor of multilateral diplomacy and peacekeeping, including paying U.S. peacekeeping arrears at the United Nations.

* Stop aiding repressive regimes and instead support democratic African solutions, as in the aftermath of the election in Kenya. This crisis, which threatened to turn into a civil war earlier this year, was peacefully resolved through African mediation led by former U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan. The U.S. played a supportive, rather than an ostentatious, role.

* Support the large community of recent African immigrants to the U.S., many of whom are engaged in family and community projects to help their countries.

In short, if the United States takes a narrow view of Africa – as a recipient of “charity,” a place to pump oil, as an arena for fighting terrorists – then African hopes being evoked by the Obama candidacy will almost certainly be disappointed.

If, however, the U.S. takes a long view, understanding that its security depends on the human security of Africans, then there are real prospects for a new era of collaboration and good will.

By Merle Bowen and William Minter – GateHouse News Service

Merle Bowen (bowen@illinois.edu) directs the Center for African Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. William Minter, based in Washington, D.C., edits the online publication AfricaFocus Bulletin (wminter@igc.org).