Opinion
Obama Africa visit too late: China leads the United States in Africa race
By Frank Sieren
U.S. President Barack Obama cannot do much more in Africa. Asia, especially China, is so far ahead that the United States won’t be able to catch up.
Last weekend, U.S. President Barack Obama traveled to East Africa with a big business delegation. In the Kenyan capital, Nairobi, he co-hosted this year’s Global Entrepreneurship Summit, which took place in sub-Saharan Africa for the first time. He also signed agreements expected to ease future investments in Kenya by American firms.
After Kenya, his journey took him to , Addis Ababa, the capital of Ethiopia, where he visited the African Union headquarters.
Obama has come to Africa a bit late. Just 2 days before he arrived, China granted US$17 million to Kenya for a new Confucius Institute – humanitarian aid for refugees from Somalia and the refurbishment of the Kasarani sports complex – where Obama made a speech to thousands of onlookers.
The timing was not coincidental. China wants to show the United States who is calling the shots and paving the path to successful cooperation with African countries.
China understood Africa’s value from the point of view of natural resources much earlier than the United States. Africa’s population of 1.1 billion and its booming middle class offer a new market for Chinese products. Trade between China and Africa reached US$222 billion in 2014, (is expected to hit US$385 billion in 2015) – about three times more than trade between Africa and the United States.
Too late, Obama
The U.S. president, whose father was Kenyan and who still has family there, has failed to enable his country to benefit from Africa’s boom. It was only last year that the United States woke up and invited all African states to its U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington. Here, too, the United States was no pioneer. China and Japan have done this for years. India and South Korea also have long-established business connections with Africa.
Now, it’s too late. Obama’s visit has had little value in both ideological and economic terms. The first African American president of the United States, Nobel Peace laureate and beacon of hope for millions could have sunk his teeth into the matter earlier. Instead, Obama avoided Africa during his first years in office and took too long to visit. Finally, in the summer of 2013, not long after his second term began, he made an official 8-day trip to Africa, stopping off in Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania.
