US election: Africa expecting more of the same whoever wins

Whether Donald Trump gets re-elected or Joe Biden becomes the 46th president of the United States is unlikely to mean much for most African countries, analysts say.

In Zimbabwe, many citizens attribute their economic troubles to the sanctions imposed by the US on the southern African country because of former president Robert Mugabe's human rights abuses and policy of seizing land from white farmers.

In the two decades since then, China has been bankrolling Harare and pushing for the sanctions to be lifted to help heal its economy, which is forecast to contract by 10.4 per cent this year, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Get the latest insights and analysis from our Global Impact newsletter on the big stories originating in China.

David Tinashe Hofisi, a human rights lawyer and political analyst in Zimbabwe, said Trump was not looking to resolve the US relationship with Zimbabwe, and Biden would be wary of being seen to be "cosying up to a dictator", an accusation he levelled at Trump.

"If Biden wins, he will seek to restore and strengthen ties with traditional allies and not perceived pariahs like the regime in Harare," Hofisi said.

But nobody in Harare believed "a change or lack thereof in the US presidency will result in any changes for Zimbabwe since the sanctions regime enjoys bipartisan support", he said.

A Biden victory might mean the Zimbabwean situation getting more attention in the US but "that will only harden rather than soften the stance on sanctions", he said.

Across Africa, opinions are divided on who will win the US election. According to a study by the Pew Research Centre, Trump inspires less confidence globally than his predecessor. Among the respondents were people from Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa and Tunisia.

Nobody in Harare believes there will be any change for Zimbabwe, regardless of who is in the White House, human rights lawyer David Tinashe Hofisi says. Photo: AFP alt=Nobody in Harare believes there will be any change for Zimbabwe, regardless of who is in the White House, human rights lawyer David Tinashe Hofisi says. Photo: AFP

Michael Chege, a political ­economy professor in Nairobi, said "most right thinking and well informed Africans should be hoping for a Biden victory and looking forward to seeing the last of the Trump presidency".

Africans had not forgotten the moral outrage Trump caused in 2018 by calling African countries "shitholes" or his insults of Africans and African-Americans as revealed in the memoirs of his former lawyer and confidante, Michael Cohen.

Chege said there had been some high points in Trump's Africa trade and investment policy, like the US$60 billion Prosper Africa private-sector led infrastructure programme, but the US was still lagging behind China.

"China needs more competition in Africa but Prosper Africa and stand-alone free-trade agreements with countries like Kenya are not the solution," he said.

China is Africa's largest trading partner, having surpassed the US in 2009. China-Africa trade in 2019 was US$208.7 billion, according to figures from Beijing, while US-Africa trade totalled just US$56.9 billion, based on official data.

Obert Hodzi, an international relations scholar at the University of Liverpool, described Trump's policy towards Africa as "ambivalent at best".

Apart from the Africa strategy announced by former national security adviser John Bolton, nothing tangible had happened, he said.

"There is no clarity on what the US wants in Africa because in Trump's plans, Africa is peripheral," he said.

Professor Martin Rupiya, innovation and training manager at the African Centre for the Constructive Resolution of Disputes in Durban, South Africa, said it was only since Trump had been in the White House that "we have begun to realise how important a conducive engagement with Washington actually is".

Previous US presidents had nurtured ties with the continent, such as the US President's Emergency Plan for Aids Relief under Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, while Obama was regarded as a son of Africa because his father was from Kenya, Rupiya said.

"Now, with Trump, we see deliberate and deadly interference in Libya, and irresponsible comments about Egypt bombing the Ethiopian Nile dam project."

Trump's insinuation that Cairo might "end up blowing up" the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam was condemned as tantamount to a declaration of war by groups in Ethiopia. The president also cut US$264 million in funding for the east African nation.

"We need Africa to engage directly with Washington but not in the Trump way," Rupiya said.

Hodzi said that Africans cared about the US election, as America is still seen as a model for democracy, but attitudes were changing.

"The US is losing the high ground to lecture Africa on democracy and elections," he said. "The US's loss of a moral legitimacy to lead the global democracy agenda is what I think is the biggest challenge for Africa."

American democracy was now facing the same challenges most African countries had been facing, he said.

When Trump voiced concern about the fairness of the electoral process, he was raising the same concerns that opposition political leaders had been raising across Africa, Hodzi said.

"With America showing that it is not easy to restore their legitimacy, I think we are going to see a more sustained attack on democracy and elections," he said.

This article originally appeared on the South China Morning Post (SCMP).

Copyright (c) 2020. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.