Does this week's intervention by U.S. presidential candidate Barack Obama in the debate over Zimbabwe's election signal that Africa will play a more central role in the foreign policy of an Obama administration? AllAfrica intern W. Hassan Marsh looks at the prospects.
The rise of Barack Obama to presumptive Democratic nominee for the presidency of the United States has electrified much of the continent. But an examination of his positions and advisors shows there is potential for an Obama presidency to deliver for Africa more than just excitement at having one of its sons in the Oval Office.
Born to a Kenyan father, Obama suggests in his memoirs that Africa has always figured an important place in his personal and political life. In his first book, Dreams From My Father, he relates his political engagement as a student activist to end apartheid in South Africa.
Much of Africa reciprocates Obama's attachment to the continent. In Kisumu, near his father's birthplace, locals have renamed a local beer brand from "Senator" to "Obama". Nightclubs across the continent bang out hits such as Tony Nyandundo's song "Obama" and the British newspaper, the Guardian reports that Nigerian co-eds plaster photos of the junior senator for Illinois on dormitory walls as if he were a rock star.
Obama has not gone unnoticed by African governments either.
"Today marks a pivotal moment for the United States," said Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga in a statement released when Obama emerged with more convention delegates than his rival, Hillary Clinton. "The decision by the white majority electorate to vote for an African-American for such an august position is a vibrant indicator of the long distance the U.S. has traveled from its history of slavery and racial discrimination."
Obama Goes To Africa
Obama's political interest in Africa was first displayed on a 15-day diplomatic tour of five African countries in 2006. In Kenya, he addressed directly the issues of corruption and ethnic politics, getting under the skin of President Mwai Kibaki's administration, several media outlets reported.
Obama also traveled to the Darfur conflict zone with U.S. Senator Sam Brownback (Republican - Kansas) and co-sponsored the Darfur Peace and Accountability Act of 2006 which Brownback introduced. The act classified the conflict in Darfur as genocide and authorized U.S. assistance for African Union forces in the region.
Obama has also co-sponsored in the U.S. Senate the Sudan Divestment Authorization Act of 2007 that would enable federal, state and municipal government entities to divest themselves of Sudan-related stock.
Bringing Hope To Hopeless Conflict
An Obama presidency won on a campaign message of hope might help bring long-lasting and seemingly hopeless conflicts on the continent to an end.
One of his leading foreign policy advisers, Susan Rice, is known for her research both on the Darfur genocide and on failed states. Rice, who served as President Bill Clinton's assistant secretary of state for Africa and is now a Brookings Institution senior fellow, has formulated a political philosophy of humanitarian intervention around the newly-developing principle under international law of a "responsibility to protect" civilian populations.
Militants fighting in the oil-rich Niger Delta region of Nigeria are reported by This Day newspaper to respect Obama, and the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta (MEND) stated recently it would consider seriously adopting a ceasefire in response to a personal appeal.
Although the Obama's campaign denied reports that Obama had made such an appeal, MEND's statement suggests he might be able to play a role in mediating an end to African conflicts.
But some African scholars are responding to the Obama phenomenon in more measured fashion.
Cameroonian historian and political theorist Achille Mbembe warns that Africa's expectations of Obama are "too emotional, irrational, and unrealistic."
"I would make a distinction between the symbolic significance of this black man being elected to the most powerful position on earth and the political consequences," he said in a telephone interview from his home in South Africa. "Obama will be pushing the interests of America first. He would not be there as an African; he would be there as an American."
The key interests for the U.S. in Africa are securing strategic resources such as oil, fending off Chinese competition and preventing terrorists from seeking refuge in failed states.
Nevertheless, says Mbembe, an Obama presidency offers Africa unprecedented opportunities.
"It doesn't seem to me that there would be new ideas coming out [from Obama in the U.S.]. It's up to some major countries in Africa – such as South Africa, Nigeria and a few others – to begin reflecting seriously on what an Obama presidency might mean.
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"We will have a sympathetic ear; how that sympathy translates into progressive, radically new forms of America's engagement with the continent needs to be seen."
The Bigger Picture
Much of the buzz surrounding Obama's campaign has related to just exactly who he is. Some call him black, others call him mixed. Many on the continent consider him African.
Mbembe considers the controversy as a part of Obama's strength. "He is all of that," he said. "He is afropolitan in the sense of bringing together the African side of him and the other side that has to do with the worldliness. That capacity transcends all the primary identifications and makes him a powerfully unifying force in our fractured world."
In that vein, Obama's rise to office holds the promise of a shift in Africa and the Diaspora from a politics of victim-hood to a politics of possibility.
"The Obama phenomenon reframes the black question," Mbembe concludes. "It pushes it to a level that we have not achieved in the history of modernity. It's more than Frederick Douglass; it's more than Martin Luther King, Jr." He paused, searching for words: "It's something else."
