US game seen as Chinese checkers

Obama's African visit shows Americans looking over their shoulder at China

Quite understandably, US President Barack Obama's visit to Africa has been the big story throughout Africa this past week. However, a review of media coverage of the event shows that China remained a subtext of the Obama tour in the context of a putative competition between the US and China in Africa.

While enroute from Senegal - the first stop of his three-nation tour - to South Africa, Obama was reported as saying that the US was not in pursuit of a Cold War-like polarity with any other nation in Africa.

Observers would, however, read this in reverse, on the back of sufficient geopolitical and hardnosed economic motives that would drive the US to curtail China's rise in Africa, while at the same time closing deals with a continent increasingly referred to as "rising Africa".

On the day of Obama's arrival in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania's The Citizen newspaper ran an article under the headline "The Chinese and Americans are coming" that demonstrated how China is trumping the US in economic matters. While in South Africa, the US president's circuitous but critical comments on China drew the headline: "Obama accuses China of not benefiting Africans".

South Africa's premier finance and corporate journal Business Day posed: "Can Obama's Power Africa plan hold a candle to China's investment?"This is in reference to the unveiling of Power Africa, a project for which the US has set aside $7 billion for infrastructure works meant to light up the continent, vis-a-vis China's own $20-billion fund earmarked for projects subsuming the energy sector.

But commentators have been quick to point out that Chinese and other companies from emerging economies have been active in the energy sector on the continent over the past decade, and the US will be joining a crowded field of contract seekers.

The narrative therefore is that the US, having had a head start in Africa, has been consistently ceding ground in the crucial economic spheres that also have an impact in the international political arena.

With respect to the performance of the US and China in Africa, the figures speak for themselves. While the US' volume of trade has been on the ascendancy, from $30 billion in 2001 to slightly over $100 billion today, China's economic juggernaut has seen a meteoric rise from about $10 billion at the beginning of this century to over $200 billion today.

On an emotional level, many Africans have been critical of the Obama presidency, some taking the perspective that the first African-American president, with direct relatives in Kenya, is first and foremost an American and not an African leader.

Nonetheless, Obama's conscience may have been pricked to the extent of undertaking a much more extensive tour to sub-Saharan Africa than he did in 2009 when he stopped over in Ghana for a couple of hours.

By contrast, high-level Chinese contacts are a fact of life in Africa, and President Xi Jinping's visit to Tanzania in March has been pointed at as one of the major reasons this East African country was chosen for Obama's visit. Indeed, hardly a day passes without a high-ranking Chinese leader touching base in an African country or an African leader being hosted at the Great Hall of the People.

Away from filial considerations, Obama's visit can be seen from the perspective of recent US legislative policy shifts. It's worthwhile looking at some of the US government policy re-orientation that explains his visit.

In November 2011, the US Committee on Foreign Relations held hearings tellingly entitled "China's Role in Africa: Implications for US Policy". In March 2012, the US Congress debated the same topic. In June 2012, President Obama announced a new policy for Africa, the first in as many years. From December last year through to May, US legislators have followed up with deliberations on how more US exports to Africa would create jobs for the American economy.

The US lawmakers have made it patently clear that China is thriving in Africa through strategies that make its exports attractive for African consumers. In the same breath, discussions in the US have centered on how the US should gain lost ground and map new pathways, not just to reap from an economic engagement with Africa, but to tame a resurgent China.

The emerging picture is one where the US, egged on by American politicians and businesses, will commit more resources to Africa, support its private sector in a more aggressive manner than it has done in the past, and probably move away from a preoccupation with soft issues such as democracy and human rights to economic diplomacy.

Whichever way one looks at the unfolding scenario, ratcheting Sino-Africa relations remains a major driver for the US' re-engagement with Africa.

The writer is a PhD candidate at Communication University of China and visiting researcher at Witwatersrand University, South Africa. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily Africa 07/05/2013 page10)