Editorial
America’s Lost Opportunities in Africa
Over the next few weeks, various U.S. based bodies – Brookings Institution, Woodrow Wilson Center and the Corporate Council for Africa – will emerge with reports and recommendations to the Obama Administration. Each of these reports will have three things in common:
– First, 6 of the world’s fastest growing economies are in Africa;
– Second, China and other countries like those of the European Union, India and even Brazil are taking advantage of the lucrative opportunities and resources that currently await in Africa;
– and third, America, which was, until 2009, Africa’s largest single trading partner, is not even competitive on the continent.
Referring to the U.S. as ‘too largesse to be lithe,’ the Wilson Center’s report – of which our Dennis Matanda is co-author – suggests that the different bureaucratic steps one has to go through to get America to move into Africa are, basically, hobbling U.S. businesses from getting in on the action. However, this does not seem to recognize that the U.S. government is only about 20 – 25 percent of the U.S. economy.
The fact is that the American investors are not necessarily swooping into Africa because they, mostly, do not know about the opportunities that exist there – some still think Africa is one country and full of flies and dying children – and especially because the U.S. is still a place to invest.
The world’s largest economy has the capacity to gobble up any investment dollars and that is why the U.S. treasury bonds are the world’s safest investment!
Having said that, it is also crucial for us to note that one of the reasons U.S. investment in Africa tends to be an arduous task rests on the polarization between the Democrats and Republicans. There’s no doubt that if Obama – America’s first African American president – had even pivoted to Africa and tried to do a few things for the continent in his first term, the Republicans would have used this against him. They were already questioning his heritage and the birthers had made such inroads with the American public that the president himself had to release his birth certificate.
Thus, even though many Africans understood what Obama was going through at home, they were also disappointed that the Americans could be so petty. And in the process, China started its white-hot process of invading Africa.
