Daily Independent (Lagos)
Okechuku Emeh
7 January 2009
column
As part of the impelling necessity for conflict resolution and peace-building in the post-Cold War Africa, the Obama administration should assist the continent with capacity building in the area of preventing and managing conflicts through fostering of the policies of good governance, the rule of law, social justice, fundamental human rights and equitable distribution of economic resources.
The administration should enlist the support of the Group of Eight (G-8) highly industrialised countries for African peace-keeping through the AU and other regional peace-keeping initiatives like ECOMOG in West Africa. And aware that conflicts and wars are a deterrent to economic growth and development, the new occupants of the White House should encourage international financial institutions (IFIs) like the World Bank to strengthen their efforts in post-conflict reconstruction in war-torn countries like Mozambique, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Ethiopia, Eritrea, DR Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda, Sudan, Guinea-Bissau and others, to enable them not to fall back to the dark and hideous past of bloodletting and destruction.
It is also hoped that the incoming Obama administration would make the growth of democratic process in Africa one of the fulcra of its foreign policies. This can be done through economic aid, capacity and institutional building and development of institutions of democracy - including the justice system, legislatures, the police, local authorities, trade unions, the media, electoral bodies and civil society organisations.
The Obama administration should equally assist in efforts to build democratic and free countries in the seemingly close political societies of North Africa, which have lagged behind sub-Saharan African countries in embracing political reforms. Notably, most of the countries in the region, though economically buoyant but democratically backward, have been under absolute monarchy (like Morocco) or under one-man rule like Ghadafi's Libya (since 1969), Hosni Mubarak's Egypt (since 1981), Zine al Abidine Ben Ali's Tunisia (since 1987), or under shaky democracy marked by repressive conditions like Abdelaziz Bouteflika's Algeria and neighbouring Mauritania.
Considering that full democratisation of societies in North Africa would be crucial in appeasing the rising sense of alienation, disillusionment and political bondage that led to the upsurge of hardline Islamic militancy in the region, as found outlet in violent guerilla uprising in places like Algeria and Egypt, as well as nefarious activities of Al Qaeda in the Maghreb region, which also portends danger to the U.S now waging war on terror, the Obama administration should help re-stimulate interest in democratic process in the entire region. To achieve this, the administration should elicit the support of other Western democracies and supranational bodies like the UN and AU to clear out the swamps of political oppression and socio-economic alienation that have made such region one of the hatcheries of international terrorism. Thankfully, in his 2006 book, The Audacity of Hope, Senator Obama wrote of America's need to build a new international consensus to confront international threats, which religious extremism and virulent ethnic nationalism are part of. Hopefully, his incoming administration, unlike that of outgoing President Bush which fights fire with fire, would meet the destructive hate and bigotry of Islamic zealotry with creative love of dialogue and engagement.
The incoming administration in the U.S. is also expected to give support to politically convulsive states in Africa like Nigeria, Chad, Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Equatorial Guinea, Zimbabwe, Cameroon, Kenya and other sub-Saharan African countries where the process of political pluralism, spurred by public protests and demands for greater leadership responsibilities, has been captured, under the guise of bitter and divisive competitive elections, by the authoritarian groups already in control of power and the state resources. The untoward effects of such turbulent partisan politics in some of these countries that are on the rocky road to democracy are the epidemics of authoritarianism, disregard of the rule of law and electoral fraud that have not only undermined democratic and civic institutions, but have also heightened the level of civil tension and unrest.
The incoming Obama administration should also assist Africa to grapple with climate change and the associated global warming. Needless to say, the environmental degradation on the continent is alarming and unsustainable in the long run, as phenomena like global warming can radically alter human existence through negative impact on health, agriculture, land use, water resources and energy sector. In view of this, the Obama administration would need to play a critical role in enabling African countries to cope and adapt to the so-called "new order" unleashed by ecological catastrophes of climate change and global warming. To this end, the administration should make the U.S to be duly committed to the UN Kyoto protocol on climate change, which the country, one of the world's major industrial polluters, has pulled out from. The Obama administration should use American global influence to persuade other major industrial polluter countries like Japan, China and Russia to respect global conscience on climate change by subscribing themselves to the principles of the Kyoto system and tackling global warming through cleaner energy technologies and promotion of a post-Kyoto agreement to cut green house gases.
The incoming Obama administration would as well face an uphill task in Africa in the area of disease control, especially in rolling back the menace of HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis - deadly diseases that have caused an alarming public health emergency on the continent. Take HIV/AIDS as an example, one estimate has it that more than 30 Million Africans are infected with this dreaded pandemic that has devastated families, produced orphans and presented economic and security threats to states on the continent through undermining of manpower of all institutions by illness and death, as witnessed in the critical agricultural, educational, judicial, policy-making and security sectors. Given this, the Obama administration is expected to produce a positive knock-on effect by complementing efforts to tackle HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis on the continent, in addition to major causes of maternal and infant deaths. The administration should enlist the support of bodies like Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and Harvard AIDS Institute to help African states to produce cost-effective generic drugs or anti-retrovirals (ARVs) that have made HIV survivable in the U.S and Europe for treatment of Africans living with AIDS. That several Western countries like America are investing billions of dollars in fighting terrorism but failing in subsidising ARVs for HIV/AIDS patients in Africa is a clear case of egoistic obscenity of the Western world that should be reversed by the incoming Obama administration for a humane world.
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