BLUE LINES • THE INSIDE VIEW The primary rules for foreign dignitaries visiting Africa are stick to the upbeat, unveil credible plans to improve lives and don’t bang on about military aid. Although the United States is widely seen as eclipsed by China in Africa, President Barack Obama’s hop through Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania this week stuck to the rules and won back a few votes. President Xi Jinping can’t compete with Obama’s innate advantage in Africa – that his father was Kenyan. Obama also came with US$7 billion of state-backed loans and another $9 bn. of private-sector finance for his ‘Power Africa’ plan to generate over 10,000 megawatts of electricity. Newly appointed US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker is due to improve the terms of the US free trade treaty with Africa. More on the Obama’s new Africa policy may emerge after Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a former Ambassador to Liberia who succeeds the redoubtable Johnnie Carson as Assistant Secretary for African Affairs, gets established. Obama’s appointment of Susan Rice as National Security Advisor and anti-genocide campaigner Samantha Power as new US Ambassador to the UN means more coldness between Washington and Kenya’s newly elected President Uhuru Kenyatta, facing charges of mass murder at the International Criminal Court. Despite Obama’s huge popularity in his father’s country, a stopover in Nairobi was ruled out of contention very early in the planning of the trip.
Posted on: Fri, 05 Jul 2013 21:30:45 +0000
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