In a week when a lot else is happening in the world, the American media gave little coverage to President Bush's five-nation tour of Africa. They should have paid more attention, because Africa will be making the headlines of tomorrow in our rapidly changing world.
Africans gave Mr. Bush an enthusiastically warm welcome on his five-nation tour. That might surprise Americans because they hear so little about Africa in their news and about their country's generous and highly effective program to combat HIV/AIDS and malaria, two of the major killers in Africa. Malaria kills a million children a year in sub-Saharan Africa and is easily preventable. Mr. Bush was handing out mosquito nets in Tanzania as part of a 1.2 billion dollar anti-malaria program. He gets little credit for that at home, but Africans are grateful.
A year ago, the President of China, Hu Jintao, also made a tour of Africa (his second in nine months) and received a warm welcome. China is doing a lot for Africa, building refineries, factories, schools, roads and other infrastructure. Africans are grateful for that too.
There is a reason for this new foreign attention to Africa's needs. I could sum it up in one word – oil – but that is perhaps too cynical an explanation. Mr. Bush wants to be seen as a “compassionate conservative†who has done something positive for humanity. But it is also true that America and China are competing for the next great source of oil in a world where other sources are diminishing. Africa, which fell off the geopolitical map when the Cold War ended, is once again important to the rest of the world. We need Africa as much as it needs us.
America and China are now the major players in Africa, and though their main goal is the same – securing access to the continent's rich natural resources – their tactics are different.
The United States has a dual approach to Africa that is a mixture of charity and self-interest. While pouring private and public money into programs to fight disease and poverty in Africa, America has also militarized its Africa operations. The Pentagon, rather than the State Department or the U.S. Agency for International Development, is now in charge. A new military command, AFRICOM, oversees and coordinates both development and security missions on the continent, within a framework of fighting the administration's war on terror. This military approach led the United States to back the 2006 Ethiopian invasion of Somalia, which toppled an Islamist government that Washington did not like. The result was a disaster for the Somali people, who are still suffering from the chaos that ensued.
The Chinese, on the other hand, seem to have a purely business approach to Africa. They make deals for natural resources, build needed infrastructure in return, and ask few questions about good governance or human rights. If Sudan is fighting a civil war in Darfur that the West condemns, that is not China's problem. Sudan has oil. The China National Offshore Oil Corporation is the biggest foreign investor in Sudan. It has built hospitals and schools as well as an oil refinery. China's aid-for-oil strategy is transforming transportation and production in Africa. China gets access to key resources. Africa gets new facilities. China also gets new markets. More than half a million Chinese businessmen now work in Africa.
Both the American and Chinese approaches have flaws. But on a continent where 75 percent of the population lives on less than two dollars a day, foreign interest is welcomed, even if it sometimes has unfortunate consequences. Africa is beginning to attract a lot of attention, except in the American news media.
