March 9, 2006
by Salih Booker & Ann-Louise Colgan

"2006 will help clarify whether the compassionate concern for the African 
continent, worn like a badge by western leaders last year, is a true 
determinant of Africa policy, or whether it merely masked other, more 
'strategic' and less 'benevolent' impulses and interests."

In 2006, Africa will witness a new wave of U.S. soldiers landing on the 
continent for training and other missions, as Washington takes aim at 
reshaping Africa to better serve America’s security interests. The trend in 
the Bush Administration’s Africa policy is toward an even greater focus on 
the so-called War on Terrorism, with emphasis on intelligence gathering, 
securing "ungoverned spaces" on the vast continent, and pre-positioning 
soldiers and equipment to project force globally and to deter Al-Qaeda in 
Africa. But American involvement in actual peacemaking or peacekeeping 
missions in Africa is far less likely, even as genocide continues in Darfur, 
Sudan.

The same Africa policy is equally intended to secure access to West African 
oil, which the Bush Administration now views as a strategic national 
interest. Imports of African oil are projected to grow from their current 
15% of the U.S. total to 25% by 2015. The U.S. already imports more oil from 
Africa than Saudi Arabia, and within a decade it could become a greater 
source of oil imports than the whole of the Persian Gulf.

This year, when it comes to U.S. relations with Africa, the pre-occupation 
of U.S. officials with oil and guns will stand in stark contrast to the 
expressed concern of the American people regarding the ongoing genocide in 
Darfur and global health challenges like HIV/AIDS and the bird flu. The Bush 
Administration’s policy also fails to address Africans’ own concerns with 
human development, still an urgent priority despite last year’s proclaimed 
Africa focus.


From Live 8 to LIVE X: Assessing the Aftermath of "Africa’s Year"

If 2005 was the "year for Africa", 2006 is likely to offer a different 
picture of U.S. designs on the continent.

Last year, rich country governments fell over one another making new 
promises to double aid, relieve debts, treat more people living with 
HIV/AIDS, and support African initiatives. The promises made were wholly 
inadequate, but they now provide African governments, civil society and 
international activists with specific measures to hold rich country leaders 
and institutions accountable in 2006.

The Group of Eight (G-8) rich country leaders last year promised to increase 
aid to Africa by $25 billion annually by 2010. This year will be the first 
opportunity to measure progress towards this commitment. While European 
Union countries have committed to provide 0.7% of their Gross National 
Product (GNP) in development assistance for impoverished countries by 2015 
[1], the U.S. still refuses to embrace that longstanding goal.

The Bush Administration claims that it has tripled aid to Africa since 2000, 
but the reality is that U.S. development aid to Africa has not even doubled. 
The total of all forms of U.S. aid to Africa increased by only 56% during 
President Bush’s first term, and over half of the increase consisted of 
emergency food aid rather than development assistance. In his new budget for 
2007, the President has requested only $3 billion for the Millennium 
Challenge Account (MCA), which he had initially promised would reach a 
budget of $5 billion per year by 2006. In successive years, the amount 
requested and ultimately appropriated has fallen far short of the 
President’s promise. Only 3 African countries have received any money from 
the MCA to date - Benin, Cape Verde and Madagascar.

Last September, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank 
approved a G-8 plan to cancel the debts of 18 countries, 14 in Africa, 
beginning in 2006. This move by the G-8 and the financial institutions set 
an important precedent for 100% debt cancellation, but it excludes the 
majority of African countries. It also continues the precedent of future 
debt relief being tied to harmful economic conditions. At present, there are 
still 20 African countries burdened with such conditions in the queue for 
possible future debt cancellation. The debt deal equally fails to 
acknowledge the illegitimate nature of these debts, most of which resulted 
from irresponsible loans to former unrepresentative regimes and did not 
benefit the people that must now pay them.

Contrary to popular perceptions, more money continues to flow out of Africa 
than trickles in from donors. There are also real concerns that additional 
nations now in line for debt cancellation will have to wait at a minimum 
until mid-2007 - a full two years after the G-8 Summit in Scotland - for 
their debts to be cancelled to the World Bank, and that these countries will 
have to continue paying their debts in the meantime even after they have met 
all the onerous creditor conditions.

On HIV/AIDS, the G-8 promised last year to make treatment available to all 
who need it by the year 2010. But these rich countries failed to say how 
they would reach this goal and how much it will cost. Last year, the 
deadline passed for the "Three by Five" initiative of the World Health 
Organization, which was intended to put 3 million additional people living 
with HIV/AIDS on life-saving therapy by the end of 2005. The goal was not 
met: only an additional 1 million people had been given access to 
anti-retroviral treatment by the end of the year, and the death toll from 
the pandemic still surpassed 3 million people in 2005.

This year, the United Nations General Assembly Special Session (UNGASS) on 
HIV/AIDS will review progress and challenges in meeting the goals set by the 
2001 UNGASS, and will discuss the new universal access targets for HIV 
prevention, treatment, care, and support to be achieved by 2010. But without 
a significant new political and financial commitment from the U.S. to the 
Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and other important 
multilateral initiatives, little change is anticipated in the course of this 
pandemic and new targets will likely remain elusive. At best, one in ten 
Africans in need of antiretroviral treatment is now receiving it.

While last year was marked by the "Live 8" concerts, this year will feature 
the "LIVE X" military maneuvers in West Africa. This ‘live exercise’ will 
see 6,500 troops of the NATO Response Force sweep in on the 10 islands that 
constitute Cape Verde for 14 self-sustaining days of make-believe missions. 
LIVE X is a large-scale military exercise to be run out of the Netherlands 
with forces coming from bases in Germany, Spain and France. Sadly, the 
nearly 3 million people internally displaced in Darfur and threatened by 
continuing violence cannot expect to see a ‘live exercise’ of a Response 
Force to provide them protection and facilitate the delivery of humanitarian 
assistance.

The LIVE X and other training exercises, such as operation "Africa Endeavor 
06" scheduled for Pretoria in July, along with military sales programs and 
military officers training, are indicative of the higher priorities of U.S. 
policy in Africa. Testifying before Congress in 2005, General James L. 
Jones, Supreme Allied Commander of the U.S. European command, said, "the 
breeding grounds of terrorism and illicit activity on the continent of 
Africa require our attention." He said that a more pro-active U.S. approach 
would offer a "powerful inoculation" against future terrorist activity. 
Jones stated that U.S. military programs in Africa, "support the long-term 
strategic objectives of the Global War on Terrorism by building 
understanding and consensus on the terrorist threat; laying foundations for 
future ‘coalitions of the willing;’ and extending our country’s security 
perimeter."[2]

General Jones described dozens of current U.S. initiatives on the continent 
designed to develop effective security structures in Africa and boost 
African governments’ counter-terrorism efforts - from NATO action on the 
Mediterranean in North Africa, to the Trans-Sahara Counter-Terrorism 
Initiative, which is the long-term interagency plan to combat terrorism on 
the continent. These initiatives are the framework through which the U.S. 
envisions engaging future threats on the African continent.

With 1,500 U.S. troops of the Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa based 
in Djibouti since 2002, an increase in training exercises across the 
continent and an explosion in Africa-focused anti-terrorism training 
programs, what is now unfolding is the most significant U.S. military 
engagement in Africa since 25,000 troops went to Somalia in 1992. More 
importantly, this ongoing expansion of U.S. military assets and interests in 
Africa reflects a growing bias toward African militaries as the key 
institutions through which to promote security in the region, a security 
defined differently than that presently preoccupying most African 
governments and their people.


Africa’s "New" Strategic Value: The U.S. Quest for Energy Security

At present, conventional wisdom holds that African oil will occupy a 
position of even greater strategic importance to the U.S., Europe and Asia 
(principally China) over the next decade. Africa has always been considered 
of strategic importance to U.S. global interests because of its enormous 
resources and its expansive geography. Now, it is estimated that the U.S. 
will invest over $10 billion per year in oil activities in the region in the 
coming decade. According to the latest trade statistics (2004), oil imports 
account for more than 70% of all U.S. imports from Africa.

The principal motivation for the U.S. focus on African oil is uncertainty 
over Middle East oil supplies and the consideration of petroleum imports as 
a matter of national security. According to observers, West African oil is 
advantageous for western countries because it is high-quality and low 
sulphur (therefore easier to refine) and closer to markets in the U.S.

It is also assumed, incorrectly, that because this oil is mostly extracted 
from offshore fields it is somehow removed from political instability and 
conflicts in the producing countries and can more easily be protected from 
turmoil. As is obvious from recent headlines, hostage-taking and takeovers 
of oil platforms in the Niger Delta are becoming almost routine and are 
increasingly the defining strategy for marginalized communities demanding 
justice and economic compensation from foreign oil companies and the 
Nigerian government.

In fact, the projected increase in U.S. investments in Nigeria’s oil 
industry and the subsequent U.S. - Nigeria security deal on the Niger Delta, 
point toward a further militarization of a longstanding conflict over 
economic compensation for environmental damage and economic injustice. In 
early 2006, a court in Nigeria ordered Royal Dutch Shell Oil Company to pay 
US$1.5 billion in compensation to the ethnic Ijaw inhabitants of the Niger 
Delta, where clashes over the control of the region’s oil wealth have 
intensified. The Ijaw community took the case to court after Shell refused 
to pay compensation ordered by the country’s parliament. These demands for 
compensation for decades of environmental damage are increasingly part of 
the rallying cry of armed groups in the Niger Delta threatening Nigeria’s 
oil industry.

Some in the U.S. foreign policy establishment argue for a "geopolitical 
shift in U.S. energy policy" by replacing the Persian Gulf with the Gulf of 
Guinea as America’s main foreign spigot for oil. However, a failure to 
understand that Africa’s oil wealth is itself a source of violent conflict 
and instability is likely to aggravate the situation further and make U.S. 
operators a target in local battles.

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