Pan-Africanists have long argued that the expropriation and exploitation of African people and resources have been central to the accumulation strategies of capitalist imperial states. Henry Sylvester Williams, Anna Julia Cooper, Marcus and Amy Garvey, Du Bois, Claudia Jones, Walter Rodney and many more have showed us how centuries of systematic plunder, enslavement, and super exploitation of African peoples created the wealth that Europe and North America hold over African peoples and the rest of the world. Maintaining an unequal and hierarchical “alliance” with African states, has been and continues to be central to imperial states sustaining global dominance and superpower hegemony.
The first line of the 2022 U.S. Strategy Toward Sub Saharan Africa, released in August 2022, outlines the underlying motives of US strategy on the continent. What is clear is that the United States considers Africa as “critical to advancing our global priorities.” Aside from its explicit endorsement of advancing U.S. interests on the continent, the strategy reads as an incoherent response to Africa’s undeniable position in the world, and reflects the threatened global hegemony of the United States as it attempts to dissuade African relations with the People’s Republic of China and Russia. The Global Pan African Movement (GPAM), points to the superficial “21st century partnership” proposed in the strategy, and calls for a more sincere proposal that can transform exploitative and unequal relations. GPAM believes that a truly authentic 21st century strategy would not not reinforce the old ways under new languages, instead it should address and reconcile the ways in which the past is present, and attempt to build partnerships that are built on democratic and equitable principles.
After holding an internal education session, led by Zophia Edwards and Mahder Serekberhan, the GPAM deconstructed the four strategic objectives proposed in the strategy, to identify important the inconsistencies and hypocrisies in the document:
- We reject the term ‘Sub-Saharan Africa’
The strategy outlines the need to be “transcending geographic seams,” by addressing “artificial bureaucratic division between North Africa and sub-Saharan Africa.” However, the very title of the strategy perpetuates the artificial separation the document seems to critique. The simultaneous critique and endorsement of the idea and terminology ‘sub-Saharan’ Africa is not only one of the most glaring incoherency in the document, but it suggests that North Africa warrants a strategy that is different from other African countries without making any substantial claim as to why. The GPAM does not deploy the term ‘Sub-Saharan Africa,’ because not only does the term have no geographic, scientific, or cultural basis, but it is based on the racist attempt to craft North Africans as different from what is considered ‘Black Africa.’ As Pan Africanists we use history and reality to stand firm in a united Africa that acknowledges the interconnections and complexities of Africans and transgresses imposed racialized and structured divisions that inhibit political and economic transformations.
- We reject prescriptive identities concerning Global African People
The strategy highlights the goal to “Engage America’s African Diaspora.” The section defines African Diaspora as African Americans, descendants of formerly enslaved Africans, and nearly two million African immigrants who maintain close familial, social, and economic connections to the continent. This is, however, a superficial reflection on America’s African Diaspora, which would first, necessarily have to include African-descended people coming from across the Americas. Second, as part of America’s African diaspora, the strategy conflates African Americans with other African descendant groups, without careful recognition of the different experiences and historical position of African Americans, giving overtones of the very controversial ADOS political agenda. The GPAM firmly rejects movements like ADOS that are attempting to create divisions between Global Africans, but it also rejects categorizations that do not reflect the history, complexity, or the reality of Global Africans and indirectly creates similar divisions. If the United States is really concerned with African descendants, then it must engage with and support the works of the recently formed Permanent Forum on People of African Descent at the United Nations.
- We reject the push for the region to remain “open and accessible to all”
The first strategic objective listed in the document is “Foster Openness and Open Societies.” Considering historical and contemporary relations between the US and African countries, progressives must ask what is the basis on which Africa should remain ‘open and accessible to all’? What are open societies? What does ‘open societies’ mean when people from African countries are subjected to an exclusionary visa regime that prohibits travel and work to the US? Why does the US, a country that not only heavily regulates Africans ability to enter its territory and also protects and subsidizes its different sectors, encourages an open framework for a whole continent? The push to foster openness through methods like leveraging natural resources also echoes the nature of trade relations the US seeks to maintain, i.e., Africa as a source of natural resources.
The GPAM refutes the idea that Africa should remain open and accessible to all based on the historical failures of such policies on the continent. Openness, in the form of liberalizing economies, has harmed, not helped, the majority of African people. Since the 1990s and 2000s, liberalization and Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) were enforced on the continent and across South America by foreign donors, and through policies like the Washington Consensus. Opening up, in this context, has failed the majority of Africans by creating more precarious living and working conditions. Instead, the ‘open and accessible’ nature of African economies and societies has led to increased exploitation of our workers and lack of ownership and redistribution of our resources and revenues.
In the strategy’s reflection of decades of US Policy toward Africa, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which was passed in 2000, is held as beneficial to African job creation and competitive exporting. According to U.S. Census data, in 2021 “the top five country exporters under AGOA were South Africa (vehicle parts, jewelry, and ferroalloys), Nigeria (mostly crude oil), Kenya (mostly apparel, cut flowers, and macadamia nuts), Ghana (mostly crude oil, cocoa powder/paste, and cassava), and Angola (entirely crude oil).“ Looking at the traded goods under AGOA, which are more or less raw materials sourced under abhorrent working conditions, one must ask whether economic transformation in Africa can occur without qualitative changes in trade? AGOA continues to accrue more long-term benefits for the US, as African countries are not incentivized to produce food or commodities the US produces, while they are called to produce similar commodities that eventually drives down the price benefiting US purchasers. Historically, acts like Public Law 480 (PL 480), which were framed as an aid program created to benefit aid receiving countries, have done the contrary. PL 480 was in actuality designed to benefit U.S. producers and U.S. state institutions that were benefitting from over production and the local currencies obtained, respectively, at the cost of harming local producers and local food systems. The PL480’s crop-disposal program particular came at no cost to the US, while it created a dependent relationship with African countries, by altering their food production patterns. GPAM calls for trade relations and US policy that does not harm African food security and promotes industrialization and self-sufficiency.
- We reject the ploy to use partnerships with African states as leverage to antagonize other superpowers
The strategy outlines how the US intends to hold financial relations as leverage to shape African politics and economy. The explicit mention of the People’s Republic of China and Russia not only shows how the strategy is a response to the decline of US influence on the continent, but also that the US intends to leverage its economic relations to further its imperial gains. We believe that African states must be free to form strategic partnerships independently and without consequence.
- We are cautious of the form of democracy the US intends to support
The second objective stated in the document is “Deliver Democratic and Security Dividends.” The strategy states that the US will foster transparency and accountability in African countries and constrain leaders that embezzle funds and perpetuate corruption on the continent. Historically, support for such leaders and actions has been supported by the United States when it serves its own interests and grossly overlooked when it does not. A good example of the latter is the stable relations between the US and Rwanda and Uganda, both African states being governed by administrations that egregiously violate democracy.
Despite support for Paul Kagame’s security forces, involved in terrorism in the Democratic Republic of Congo, this section ends with a discussion of counterterrorism (CT) resources provided by the US. Later in the strategy, there is another heading, “Refine and Reinvest in U.S. Defense Tools,” which indicates the US “will review and reinvest in tools for engaging with African militaries, especially programs that support necessary institutional capacity-building, combat corruption, and advance security sector reforms.” The role of the US in legitimizing and negotiating with militaries in Africa has led to the catastrophes like the one unfolding in Sudan, since April 15, 2023, when the security sectors forces being supported by the US launched an all out war that has cast insecurity and uncertainty for 40 million people. Despite the punitive measures listed to counter human rights abuses, we are yet to see these measures be deployed in cases that do not have direct U.S. interests. In regards to US tools of counterterrorism, it is important to highlight that since the founding of the Africa Command (AFRICOM) in 2007, which the strategy frames as a “holistic approach” to security, violence and instability has only increased on the continent – this disarticulation is worth interrogating, alongside the role of US led counterterrorism in countries like Afghanistan.
In regards to the question of democracy, Global Africans must begin by asking what democracy and basic rights Black people exercise in the US? What authority and legitimacy does a state that sanctions its police force to murder African descendants have in claiming it will deliver democracy elsewhere? Africans at this stage must be asking whether we want to adopt the liberal form of democracy that continues to treat many communities in the US as second class citizens, or chart our own democratic path. We must ask what are our interests, i.e., the interests of most Africans? Can sole focus on party-level politics and multi-party elections, without mention of the alleviation of the sufferable conditions of the people or popular participation in institutions, deliver democracy? What does it mean to “back civil society, and empower marginalized groups”? Is the US prepared to support living and working conditions of people, to support marginalized groups in attaining food, water, and electricity, and secure workers rights? Who is civil society? Because it has often referenced NGOs funded by organizations like USAID, which depend on foreign aid and ensures US interests.
- We question the credibility and legitimacy of the proposals on COVID-19 and Climate Change
Another strategic objective outlined is to “Advance Pandemic Recovery and Economic Opportunity.” This objective admits that “the COVID-19 pandemic and its attendant economic and social consequences,” have hindered African economies, which the document adds “have been compounded by supply chain problems and food insecurity stemming from Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine.” The document begins to explain a real concern, but there are a few questions we have in terms of the credibility and ability of the U.S. to fulfill this objective. First, how does a country with over 1 million deaths related to COVID-19, and which holds the 15th (per capita) and 1st place in the number of deaths due to COVID-19, intend to help a whole continent regarding COVID-19?
Second, despite propagandist mention of Russia’s role in further exasperating the impact of COVID-19, there is no acknowledgment of the violent measures taken by the US state and corporations in amplifying the impact of COVID-19. Not only has the ‘openness’ economic strategy the document upholds and the US historically has advocated led to the privatization and deterioration of the health sector on the continent, but during the pandemic, the US along with European countries, hoarded and stockpiled vaccines during the early months of the vaccine release, thereby preventing African people and other people racialized as non-white in the peripheralized countries of the world from being able to get vaccinated. This led to a global stir about the dangerous impacts of this vaccine nationalism and/or vaccine apartheid.
The US even invoked protectionist measures to hoard materials needed to manufacture the vaccines so that producers in other parts of the world were unable to get the raw materials needed to make vaccines for their ailing population. Moreover, vaccine costs vary significantly, with peripheralized countries paying far more for a dose than North American and European governments. For instance, according to UNICEF and NPR data, the US paid $4 per dose for Astra-Zeneca, while South Africa paid $5.25 per dose and Uganda paid $8.50 per dose! On top of all this, US-dominated capital and international financial institutions used the crisis as an opportunity to increase coercion on peripheralized nations, to extract ever more. For instance, the IMF has tied some COVID-19 related loans to austerity measures. The people of Nigeria, Lesotho, and Angola for example, now have to bear the burden of intensified cost-cutting government measures.
Unlike the countries it criticizes as bad partners for Africa, the US has not advanced pandemic recovery in Africa and holds no profound plans to do so. In fact, because of US actions and the actions of other imperialist powers like the US, the global pandemic and its economic impacts have only been exacerbated.
The last strategic objective in the document is in regards to “support conservation, climate adaptation, and just energy transition”. The GPAM is once again unclear about how the US intends to fulfill this objective. Since the document acknowledges how Africa “is responsible for extremely low emissions per capita, [but] stands to suffer from some of the most severe effects of climate change,” we begin by asking what has the US done to radically cut its centuries of emissions that have largely contributed to the crisis we face today? What has the US government done to end the war between Russia and Ukraine, which has reversed important climate policies in Europe, with coal coming back in the picture, and countries like Germany considering nuclear power plants? How has the US, locally or internationally, prioritized conservation, health, and environment over corporation, militarist, and profit-based interests? The recent push to build Cop City in Atlanta, Georgia, US is perhaps one of the most recent cases that shows the unlikely nature of this objective.
The strategy reads that the “United States will work closely with countries as they determine how to best meet their specific energy needs, which include pursuing energy access and economic development goals through technologies such as energy efficiency and renewable energy” but where has been the US support to projects that actually advance this objective. On a continent that generates only 4% of electricity in the world, after its completion, the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) will become the largest hydroelectric plant in Africa and 7th largest in the world, with the potential to electrify not only Ethiopia but many of its neighbors. Not once has the US proactively supported the project, and in fact former President Trump publicly asked why Egyptian diplomats do not consider bombing the project. Where is US support for initiatives like the Great Green Wall or the Lake Chad Replenishment project?
The strategy also reads “the United States will continue pursuing public-private partnerships to sustainably develop and secure the critical minerals that will supply clean energy technologies needed to facilitate the global energy transition.” Those that are aware of the Cheney report will read this section with caution. In 2001, the Bush administration came up with a new strategy based on the conclusions of the report by the president’s National Energy Policy Development Group, chaired by Vice President Richard Cheney. What followed was a militarized and aggressive approach to securing oil in the gulf region and West Africa. As Coltan and Cobalt, necessities for technology and intended energy transitions, continue to be violently extracted and illegally traded from the DRC, the US has shown it will not take any practical steps to ensure mineral and resource extraction translates to sustainable development. The GPAM alerts progressives about how the green energy push has become a new mode of extraction that is based on harming African countries with further limiting self-determination. It does not involve restitution for the climate crimes that the US has committed, places an outsized burden on people that played a negligible role in producing the current climate crisis, and is designed to perpetuate African dependence on Europe and North America for technologies.
