Obama Gets “Into” Africa: An Ugly Scramble for Oil, Minerals, and Markets

Unfortunately US policy towards Africa have largely translated into holding the door open for U.S. multinationals to do what outsiders have done for centuries: extract the continent’s wealth.

by John Feffer

President Obama is definitely “into” Africa. As much as possible in a world riven by multiple crises, the president has made the continent a focus of his policymaking. Turning his own Kenyan heritage into a personal bridge to the region, he has visited Africa three times as president – in 2009, 2011, and 2013. He has touted his administration’s multi-billion initiatives such as Power Africa to bring electricity to millions of homes, a fellowship program for young African leaders, and the continuation of efforts to fight HIV-AIDS and other infectious diseases.

At a time when criticism is mounting about the way the president is handling the rest of the world, Africa is shaping up to be Obama’s major play for a legacy.

This week, to better position this effort, Obama welcomed delegations from 51 African countries to Washington for an unprecedented summit. As part of its press blitz, the White House released a fact sheet that detailed all the State Department’s high-profile programs including support for democracy in Nigeria, an expansion of civil society activity in Liberia, and an open government initiative in Sierra Leone. Many of these initiatives are indeed admirable, and I can imagine State Department staffers grumbling that the media focus on Ebola and Boko Haram has left no space for these more upbeat stories.

But don’t be fooled by all the talk of Obama’s special relationship with the continent or all the snazzy new entrepreneurial initiatives or the commitment to democracy reflected in his statement in Ghana a few years ago that “Africa doesn’t need strongmen, it needs strong institutions.” Most of U.S. policy toward Africa, alas, is business as usual. Yes, the President is “into Africa.” But more often that has translate into facilitating the entry of U.S. businesses into Africa so that they can do what outsiders have done for centuries: extract the continent’s wealth.

Strip away all the modern PR and prettified palaver and it’s an ugly scramble for oil, minerals, and markets for U.S. goods. Everyone wants a piece of Africa: drooling outsiders, corrupt insiders, cynical middle men. “We kind of gave Africa to the Europeans first and to the Chinese later, but today it’s wide open for us,” General Electric chief executive Jeffrey Immelt said at the summit, inadvertently providing a compact definition of neo-colonialism. And for all the talk of good governance and transparency, the political status quo of “guided democracy” with a sprinkling of genuine dictators provides the presumed stability and secure access to resources that the U.S. government, the Pentagon’s Africa Command, and businesses like General Electric value.

First, let’s dispense with the nonsense that China is the only country that behaves with no scruples when siphoning everything of value from Africa. The State Department’sJohnnie Carson provided an unvarnished U.S. perspective in a Wikileaks cable: “China is a very aggressive and pernicious economic competitor with no morals.” Well, It’s true that China has developed a reputation for dealing with dictators like Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe, failing to hire local workers or purchasing local materials, and engaging inhorrendous labor rights abuses in the mines it runs.

But China’s relationship is evolving. It is Africa’s leading trade partner, and a million Chinese are living in Africa. “A growing number of Africans say the Chinese create jobs, transfer skills and spend money in local economies,” writes the rarely China-friendlyEconomist. “African democracy has so far not been damaged. China turns a blind eye to human-rights abuses, but it has not undermined democratic institutions or conventions.”

The United States, meanwhile, presents itself as Africa’s ethical friend. It likes to point to the Dodd-Frank Act to prove that U.S. businesses are scrubbing their supply chains of unethical purchasing. The Act requires companies to disclose their payments to governments and contains specific provisions requiring producers to make sure that they’re not buying “conflict minerals” from armed groups in Congo.

But the first requirement hasn’t been implemented, and the second provision has produced decidedly mixed results. “The first round of conflict mineral investigations was due June 2, but only 6 percent of audited companies satisfied adequate compliance standards,” reports one watchdog organization. “Worst of all, of the nearly 1,000 enterprises that submitted reports pertaining to conflict minerals, 94 percent failed to validate their suppliers’ sourcing tactics.”

Dodd-Frank, in any case, affects only a small fraction of U.S. business dealings with Africa. Let’s look at the larger category of foreign direct investment (FDI). For all the high-minded talk, the United States and China have exactly the same record when it comes to FDI and governance. Both receive a score of -.1 in a Brookings index that puts Japan on top in terms of directing FDI toward more accountable governments (.5) and France at the bottom (-.3) for basically not giving a merde. In other words, both the United States and China basically go where the return on investments is most promising, regardless of political environment.

Then there’s the question of arms sales. No doubt China’s deliveries to Sudan and Zimbabwe are unacceptable, and its sales of small arms definitely fuel conflicts in the region. But according to a Norwegian study of the period 1989 and 2008, the United States provided more military assistance in dollar value to dictators in Africa than China did. In the last few years, the United States has made sales to the following unsavory governments in Africa: Algeria, Cameroon, Chad, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Niger, and Nigeria.

Since 2001, writes Nick Turse this week in China, America, and the New Cold War in Africa, “the United States has steadily increased its military footprint, its troop levels, and its missions on the continent — from night raids in Somalia and kidnap operations in Libya to the construction of a string of bases devoted to surveillance activities across the northern tier of Africa.” The State Department alone devoted $15 billion to security operations in Africa from 2005 to 2012, while the Pentagon has lavished a larger but unknown sum on its counter-terrorism operations in Mali, Niger, Nigeria, and elsewhere. The results have been less than inspiring: coups, collapsed states, and burgeoning terrorist organizations. China, meanwhile, has built roads, made friends on all sides of conflicts, and positioned itself for the long game.

The Obama administration wants us to understand that, like China, it is transforming relations with Africa. “We do believe we bring something unique to the table,” national security advisor Ben Rhodes said last week. “We are less focused on resources from Africa and more focused on deepening trade and investment relationships.”

That sounds nice. But it’s not actually true. The leading trade partner for the United States in Africa is Nigeria, and the leading U.S. import is oil. In 2013, the United Statesimported from Africa $26.3 billion in crude oil, $3.2 billion in precious stones, and nearly $1 billion in ores like titanium. That represents 77 percent of all imports. The remainder is largely raw materials such as cocoa beans, rubber, and unroasted coffee beans.

Of course, trade is a two-way relationship. As the U.S. Trade Representative Michael Froman said at the summit, “The United States has benefitted from AGOA [the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act] as well, not just from the stability that comes with increased global prosperity, but also from the market opportunities that accompany Africa’s rise. Since 2000, U.S. exports to sub-Saharan Africa have increased fourfold, from $6 billion to $24 billion. Last year, these exports helped support nearly 120,000 American jobs.” In an ideal world what’s good for Africa is also good for America. But too often, these economic deals preserve the same old inequitable relationship.

Consider the new agricultural initiatives. At the summit, the United States announcedbillions of dollars more in agricultural assistance to Africa. Although some of the funds will go to support local farmers growing food for domestic consumption, like sorghum, most of the money comes in the form of pledges by corporations like Coca Cola to source from Africa. Farmers make up two-thirds of the workforce in Africa. The challenge is to make their farming more sustainable. Tying farmers into volatile market relationships with immense multinationals is a spin of the roulette wheel, not a sure way of lifting Africa out of its dependency on the outside world.

Because of its “resource curse,” Africa’s oil and minerals and coffee beans have profited a narrow elite that has served as the middlemen to outsiders. This curse has undermined democracy and embedded corruption into the very circulatory system of the continent. If we were really “into Africa,” we would work to ensure that these resources benefit the largest number of Africans possible.

Some of what the Obama administration has done points in the right direction. But it is overwhelmed by the more powerful plays of the Pentagon and the multinationals. The president should be reining in these powerful players rather than opening the door wider for them to get into Africa. Only if this happens can the resource curse become a resource blessing. It’s the rare country like Norway that has accomplished this feat. But if Obama can help make this happen for Africa, his legacy would indeed be secure.

There Goes the Neighborhood, Thanks to Gentrification

by Abigail Mariam
Harvard Political Review

A brand new Whole Foods at the end of the street. High-rise condos built alongside subsidized housing projects. Groundbreaking for a mega athletic stadium in the neighborhood.

Each of these new additions to low-income and previously neglected neighborhoods trigger accusations of gentrification. Though multiple definitions are used to describe this phenomenon, gentrification occurs essentially when higher income actors enter low income areas and reduce potential for low-income interests to remain.

Given the migration of the global population toward cities, gentrification has caused concern among urban residents internationally. While gentrification apologists often hail how it promotes urban revitalization, they neglect to highlight how displacement and the threat of displacement pose risks to native low-income residents. These residents are often left to represent their own interests through local mobilization and advocacy.

Gentle Gentrification? Maybe Not

Some perspectives of gentrification in American cities suggest that the processes’ negative effects on low-income neighborhoods have been overstated. According to a November 2013 report from the Federal Bank of Cleveland, gentrification may not be linked to the exodus of low-income residents in a neighborhood, and may in fact benefit longtime low income residents. The report’s dismissal of gentrification’s connection to displacement echoes several academic studies of gentrification, including Joseph Vigdor’s landmark 2002 study of Boston neighborhoods in the 1970’s and 1980’s, in which the increase of neighborhood income was associated with an increase in poorer residents’ income. Its data suggested gentrification may actually improve low-income residents’ quality of life by increasing access to employment or improved neighborhood conditions and amenities, making it a rallying point for many proponents.

As optimistic as the data may be, these reports mask how these neighborhood changes are harmful to low-income residents. Tom Slater’s 2009 article articulates how gentrification leads to one element of urban planner Peter Marcuse’s original definition of displacement: conditions that prevent future low-income residents from living in a neighborhood.

Displacement in Boston, America’s #1 Urban Gentrifier

With 61% of low-price neighborhoods undergoing gentrification, Boston has become America’s top gentrifying city, according to the 2013 report referenced above. One major factor driving this has been a decline in affordability of different properties for low-income residents in the last 10 years, says Tim Davis, Senior Research Fellow at the UMass Boston Center for Social Policy. This decline in affordability is caused by both “classic gentrification,” in which higher-income residents move into neighborhoods, and the early-2000’s “sub-prime lending bubble” which led to an inflation in real estate prices that forced existing neighborhood residents to pay a larger share of their income toward housing.

“It was capital that moved in, but not necessarily higher-income families” said Davis in an interview with the HPR. In addition to a decline in affordability, less housing stock has been affordable for low-income populations as a result of higher-income interests entering the neighborhood, which is happening in “about two thirds of Boston’s neighborhoods,” says Kevin McColl, a policy adviser with the Department of Neighborhood Development for the City of Boston during an interview with the HPR. McColl notes that as the housing stock has become less available, both low-income and middle-income residents have been put at risk of displacement in neighborhoods. Middle-income residents are newly vulnerable in longtime gentrified neighborhoods in which low-income residents have already been displaced, such as the South End.

Some of the neighborhoods with the highest risk of gentrification include Chinatown and areas in the South End and South Boston, as shown in this figure.

In response to threats of displacement, many neighborhood advocacy groups have begun to organize low-income residents, such as the Chinese Progressive Association and the Codman Square Neighborhood Development Corporation. These organizations have developed campaigns to advocate for residents’ ability to keep their housing, such as the CPA’s Chinese Stabilization Campaign, and are a critical conduit for residents attempting to counteract gentrifying forces in their neighborhoods.

“Even if they can’t stop gentrification completely, [community organizations] have the ability and some resources to help some families and some communities continue,” says Davis. Sheila Dillon, Chief and Director of the Department of Neighborhood Development for the City of Boston, agrees with Davis in emphasizing that communities would lose an essential tool for visibility and advocacy without local groups who mobilize and engage residents to fight for their housing. “City-wide coalitions are helping neighborhood efforts to use their voice,” she told the HPR in an interview, “and I think that without their voice, we are going to end up with neighborhoods that are going to lose their diversity, that are going to lose certainly some of their local identity.” Organizations that are willing to advocate on behalf of these communities have been essential to the preservation of low-income interests in these areas in the face of gentrification.

Copa Pra Quem? Gentrification via the World Cup in São Paulo

Threats of displacement via gentrification know no national borders, and low-income communities in São Paulo have similarly sought to organize to protect their ability to reside in the city. With a population of nearly 11 million residents in a metropolitan area that’s only growing, São Paulo is home to many low-income residents who make due with whatever housing  they can find, giving rise to the low-income squatter communities.

However, the contestation of their squatting occurs most often when that land gains value, as has been the case in the Itaquera neighborhood on the eastern periphery of São Paulo. An hour’s drive out of downtown São Paulo, Itaquera is characterized by the low wages and high crime rates that are pervasive in poor communities. As the site of the construction of the World Cup stadium, Itaquera saw an increased level of investment in the few years preceding the 2014 World Cup, which threatened the residents of the Coumunidade de Paz, or the Peace Community—a low-income community established under a bridge about one mile away—with displacement.

The Comunidade da Paz first encountered serious risk for displacement in 2011 when notified of the city’s plan to reclaim their public land, according to Drancy Silva, a resident community organizer for the Comunidade de Paz. “We were going to be kicked out and left out with nothing” said Silva.* “It was then that we started getting organized in the community and went after the public defender’s office to fight for our right to stay.” According to Silva, the city’s secretary of housing then came to register each of the 377 families living there at the time.

Following local and international media picking up this story, the Comunidade has not only been able to remain in their area but has also negotiated with the city to provide them with utilities, such as water. Some families living in areas prone to flooding along a surrounding creek have also been given the option to relocate to public housing elsewhere in the city.

Despite this community’s successful attempts to fight against gentrifying forces of displacement and remain in their homes, the threat of future displacement still looms over residents. As Silva said, “The price of the land increased a lot, and we are in a very strategic location near the stadium. So, I do not know if we are going to be here five years from now.” An area with previously little investment, Itaquera may become a new location for development and expansion in São Paulo, giving low-income communities like the Comunidade da Paz the responsibility to fight for their ability to stay where they live.

A discussion of gentrification’s possible benefits ought to acknowledge the substantial impact displacement of all kinds has on low-income residents. As low-income residents’ mobilization efforts can attest, even the threat of displacement can be damaging to residents’ lives. Although gentrification may promote elements of urban renewal, it is crucial that policymakers and urban planners address how gentrification forces low-income urban residents to fight to keep their stake in our cities.

*Special thanks to Glenda de la Fuente for translating Drancy Silva’s interview from Portuguese.

U.S. Adoption Executive Admitted Bribing Ethiopian Officials

A former executive with a U.S.-based international adoption agency which sought to connect American families with Ethiopian children has admitted fraud, a U.S. Justice Department statement said Wednesday.

Alisa Bivens, the former foreign program director of International Adoption Guides Inc. (IAG), an adoption agency in North and South Carolina, pleaded guilty to bribing foreign officials and submitting fraudulent documents to the U.S. State Department regarding adoptions from Ethiopia.

Bivens, 42, and other co-conspirators, filed false documentation including contracts of adoption signed by orphanages in Ethiopia even though some of the children had never stayed in nor been cared for by the orphanages involved.

Bivens also admitted bribing two Ethiopian officials in order to secure their assistance in facilitating the fraudulent adoptions.

One of the officials, a teacher at a government school was given cash and other valuables in order to provide non-public medical information and social history information for potential adoptees.

The second official, the head of a regional ministry for women’s and children’s affairs in Ethiopia, took money and expenses-paid foreign trips in exchange for waving through IAG’s applications for inter-country adoptions.

Bivens will sentenced at a later date, the Justice Department said.

Source: Agence France Presse

What African leaders need to hear from President Obama

Meron Ahadu And Lulit Mesfin

When Secretary of State John Kerry travelLed to Ethiopia last year, he met a young blogger named Natnael Feleke. When he returned a few months ago, Kerry found that Feleke, along with five other bloggers and three journalists, had been arrested – the latest in a long line of journalists the Ethiopian government has detained on the claim that they were trying to incite terrorism. Although Kerry addressed the arrests with officials he met, and President Barack Obama has spoken forcefully on the importance of good governance in Africa, preoccupation with immediate security priorities – in particular counter-terrorism – trumps the fine words.

It is our hope that Obama will use the summit of African leaders he is hosting this week to launch a new chapter in US-African relationships – one in which support for good governance will guide US policy, in deed as well as in word. If not, the result is likely to be more of the very violence and instability that counter-terrorism is supposed to curb.

In our country of Ethiopia, the government maintains a stranglehold on freedom of expression. Journalists or activists who question the ruling party or its actions face arbitrary arrests and repression. After his April visit, when Kerry made the long overdue comment that it was important for anti-terrorist mechanisms to avoid curbing the free exchange of ideas, Ethiopian democracy activists around the world were thrilled.

Yet at the same time, we know that words, even from a US secretary of state, will not be sufficient to counter years of repression and disregard for human rights. The Ethiopian ruling regime – like many others in Africa – has ignored criticism from abroad; indeed, Feleke’s and the other journalists’ arrests came just days before Kerry’s visit to Ethiopia.

Shortly after his election in 2009, Obama delivered a speech in Accra, Ghana, sketching the elements of his policy toward Africa, which involved focusing on “good governance,” “the rule of law” and “civic participation.”

Ethiopia, though projected by Washington as well as Addis Ababa as an important US ally, violates these principles at every turn. The regime’s draconian Charities and Societies Proclamation Act in essence criminalises civil society. Under the terms of its 2009 anti-terrorism law, security forces can enter any home and seize any person or belonging. Presumed sympathy to anyone suspected of “terrorism,” which is very broadly defined, is punishable by death. It was under this law that Natnael Feleke was arrested.

In spite of Ethiopia’s well-documented record of oppression and corruption, it has become the biggest recipient of US foreign aid in sub-Saharan Africa, receiving more than $6 billion since 2011. And to date, the US has failed to hold the leaders of Ethiopia accountable for its abusive governance. America’s silence in the face of egregious human rights violations and brutal oppression is perceived by Ethiopians as favouring the autocratic regime.

Such oppression, combined with systematic state corruption, has resulted in a narrow, monopolistic form of governance. Ethiopia’s much-touted economic growth has mainly benefited kleptocrats, while reducing standards of living for many.

Viva the triumphant demo in Washington DC

by Robele Ababya

I watched the amazing demo with one of those rare moments of extraordinary elation that words cannot explain. The demo in tile by heroic Ethiopians enlightened my soul, lifted my moral beyond measure and enhanced my spirit to a new height so that I shall never relent in the fight for the freedom of individuals and the independence of their country, Ethiopia, in a political environment eternally characterized by genuine democracy, unity with equality, prosperity, tolerance, and social justice – all under the supreme rule of law.

The mammoth demo: – proved the old adage that unity is might; proved that peaceful demonstration is a significant input to an all-inclusive struggle for freedom; sent a shock-wave of fear down the spine of the thuggish leaders of the brutal regime engaged in cold-blooded murder of innocent demonstrators denying basic freedom of expression thereby violating its own constitution.

Historical bond between Christians and Muslims validated its strength by the warm embraces and kissing between the leaders and followers of the faiths. This marvelous pledge of unity brought tears of delight to my eyes as I am sure it did to millions of fellow Ethiopians that watched the demo. The barrier of apartheid and religions differences that the divisive policy of the TPLF/EPRDF satanic government sought to exploit in order to stay in power is shattered. Halleluiah!

The demo brought out the indisputable wisdom that the struggle at home is ultimately the determinant factor for victory over tyranny and that the input of the Diaspora to the process of that victory is indispensable. It proved that civil disobedience and all-inclusive struggle complement each other given the stance of the repressive regime holding monopoly over all pillars of democracy – and shutting the political space for constructive dialogue.

The legacy of openly and publicly declaring the oppositions as enemies by the late tyrant Zenawi is actively being upheld and promoted by his successor serving the TPLF warlords under duress. His government is on a crackdown spree on peaceful protestors including journalists, bloggers, and demonstrators to the extent of killing some and incarcerating others without trial. Therefore the red balloons released at the demo on 5/12/14 in Washington indeed rightly symbolized the lives irretrievably lost and precious blood shed by fellow citizens in pursuit of good governance.

Yes, we must never forget our martyrs and political prisoners at every opportunity such as the one presented by the grand demonstration in Washington DC – the capital city of the brave and free people of the United States of America as well as the citadel of democracy protected by its laws and the might of military and security organs.

Now that fellow Ethiopians have savored the inspiring taste of unity in diversity, they must pursue with redoubled effort their struggle for freedom and independence; fight for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners. To that end all revolutionaries should act relentlessly and selflessly heeding the old adage capsuled in the phrase “beat the iron while it is hot”.

To big Western powers national interests come first in their international relations. Likewise do the emerging non-Western powers including China and India. So, we Ethiopians have only God and ourselves to assert our freedom and independence in the unjust, corrupt, and immoral world in which we live.

In connection with the above I would like to stress that relationship between Ethiopia and Egypt is of paramount importance, more so now that, as a result of worsening Palestinian-Israeli relations, Egypt is emerging as a strong partner fostering the interests of Western powers, Israel, and the Arab world, which is in geopolitical political turmoil.

Without further ado, I shall only point out that Ethiopians at home and in the Diaspora will find it essential to collaborate in watching Egypt taking advantage of its emerging status as a regional power and beyond that will enable it to subvert vital interests of our beloved country Ethiopia. There is a rich source of knowledge and expertise in the Diaspora in the quintessential issue of relations between Ethiopia and Egypt from which political opposition and civic societies at home can benefit.

In closing, I congratulate from the bottom of my heart the patriotic organizers and participants of the outstanding demonstration in Washington DC!

LONG LIVE ETHIOPIA

rababya@gmail.com