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Kenya: U.S. Election Outcome Will Not Change Relations With Africa

Kevin J Kelley

5 September 2008

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New York — Tanzania's foreign minister said recently that the result of the US presidential election would have no impact on the two countries' good relations.

Could that also be the case for Kenya?

The US Democratic Party is generally viewed as more committed than the Republicans to facilitating Africa's development.

That apparent predisposition reflects, in part, the Democrats' heavy reliance on the votes of African-Americans. Another key factor in this year's election is Democratic candidate Barack Obama's family ties to Kenya.

But Republican nominee John McCain would likely continue the Africa policies adopted by George W Bush.

And in the view of many analysts, the approach taken by Mr Bush, a Republican, has been more beneficial to Africa than the course followed by his Democratic predecessor, Bill Clinton.

The Bush administration initiated a $15 billion Aids relief programme that has extended the lives of some 1.7 million Africans. In Kenya, the programme provided $368 million worth of assistance in 2007, enabling 166,000 Kenyans to receive anti-Aids drugs.

With nearly $700 million to be provided over the next five years, Tanzania has become the single-largest recipient of aid through the Millennium Challenge Account, another innovation of the Bush administration.

Kenya has not yet qualified for this performance-based form of development assistance, mainly because the country has failed to meet anti-corruption conditions for inclusion in the programme.

But the US has given Kenya $12.7 million for governance reforms that could enable it to gain full Millennium Challenge aid within the next year or two.

President Bush also supported an extension of the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act intended to enable Kenya and a few other African countries to continue building their apparel-export sector.

Kenya's clothing sales to the United States now total about $260 million a year, with Agoa estimated to have generated some 20,000 jobs in Kenya.

It is also unlikely that a Democratic-controlled State Department would have played a more active role in resolving Kenya's post-election crisis than did the Republican-appointed diplomats who helped engineer the power-sharing agreement.

Senator Obama pledges to sustain the Aids relief, Millennium Account, and preferential trade programmes established or expanded by the Bush administration.

Senator Obama has said he supports a set of global health and antipoverty initiatives advocated by a non-partisan and influential coalition called One Vote '08.

This campaign, headed by the former Democratic and Republican leaders of the US Senate, seeks to inject Africa-related issues into the presidential campaign.

"Instead of having Africa be an afterthought, we thought, let's make sure every candidate is educated" on the continent's problems and their potential solutions, said Bill Frist, formerly the top Senate Republican.

One Vote '08 calls for a one per cent increase in the US federal budget, with the added funds to be used to achieve five goals vital to Africa: prevent 16,000 people a day from dying due to Aids, malaria or tuberculosis; provide free primary education to 77 million children not currently attending school; halve the number of hungry people in the world; save the lives of 5.5 million children who die annually from poverty-related diseases; and provide clean water to 450 million citizens of developing countries.

Senator McCain has also taken strong positions on the One Vote '08 proposals, Mr Frist said.

In addition, the Republican candidate's wife, Cindy McCain, travelled to Rwanda in July as part of a delegation sponsored by One Vote '08. It was Mrs McCain's second trip to Rwanda, the first having taken place in the aftermath of the 1994 genocide when she contributed to relief efforts.

Senator McCain has further promised to work toward eradicating malaria in Africa if he is elected to the White House.

But the Republican candidate does not appear as well versed on Africa or as personally committed to development schemes as does Senator Obama.

Earlier this year, for example, Senator McCain responded uncertainly when asked by a reporter if he favoured spending US tax dollars on condoms in Africa as an anti-Aids measure. "I haven't thought about it before," Senator McCain said. "I don't know if I would use taxpayer money for it."

Neither the Republicans' election manifesto nor the nominee's campaign speeches include many references to Africa policy.

In comparison to Senator Obama, Mr McCain has said "much less about development issues and global health so it's hard to infer from silence," Ms Ruth Levine, a fellow at a Washington-based international-affairs think tank, told a British medical journal last month. "It does not feel like a core part of the agenda he would bring," Ms Levine added in her remarks to The Lancet.

Senator Obama, on the other hand, "has a personal knowledge and interest that is not insignificant," observed Mr Stephen Morrison, head of the Africa programme at the non-governmental Centre for Strategic and International Studies, based in Washington. "I do not think McCain is indifferent, but I do not think he has the same level of personal knowledge or passion," Mr Morrison added in his comments to The Lancet.

During a visit to Kenya in 2006, Senator Obama and his wife Michelle took the important symbolic step of being publicly tested for HIV.

The Democratic nominee has also said he wants to "break the stranglehold that a few big drug and insurance companies have" on HIV/Aids medications. That stance suggests that an Obama administration would work to make low-cost generic drugs more widely available in Africa.

Along with continuing the Aids relief programme established by President Bush, Senator Obama says he would increase US contributions to the United Nations-administered Global Fund for fighting Aids, tuberculosis and malaria.

He likewise favours a doubling of the annual amount of US international aid - to $50 billion - with a portion of that money to be used to accelerate progress toward the Millennium Development Goals.

It is not clear how Senator Obama plans to pay for these proposals, however.

With the support of an anticipated Democratic majority in the US Congress, an Obama administration might be able to do more for Africa than was done during the Bush years.

But such advances might also not prove dramatically greater than those that could be brought about under a McCain administration.

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