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africa|products

Donald Trump: Good riddance!

20th November 2020

By: Martin Zhuwakinyu

Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

     

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Donald Trump is such a sore loser. But, despite his bizarre claims that he was cheated out of victory, he will have to make way for Joe Biden as the new White House occupant, come January 20.

I’m sure the majority of Africans are not going to miss Trump, the US’s first one-term President since George HW Bush, who served from January 1989 to January 1993. In fact, many on the continent are quite elated to see the back of this fellow, who gained notoriety for racist remarks and rolling out limitations on immigration from African countries. Not once did he travel to an African country in the past four years and, during that time, he hosted only two African Presidents, Kenya’s Uhuru Kenyatta and Nigeria’s Muhammadu Buhari – fewer than any of his predecessors.

Further demonstrating he does not give a damn about Africa and other impoverished regions, in its Budget request for the 2021 fiscal year – released in February this year – his administration proposed huge cuts in US foreign aid, which is a significant revenue source for many African countries. But the curtailment requests were largely vetoed by the US Congress. Thus, the US continues to be Africa’s largest benefactor.

While the US government under Trump did articulate an Africa strategy – in 2018 – it’s apparent that at the core of the strategy is a desire to counter Chinese influence in Africa. In other words, Trump views Africa as a continent that is there for the taking, not as a partner.

To be fair, the US, through the Prosper Africa initiative, committed to making an effort to improve trade with, and investment in, Africa. But not much progress has been made, with the Washington DC-based Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Africa programme director, Judd Devermont, lamenting in an interview in June that information about the initiative had been sparse since its unveiling in 2018 and that the initiative had “lost a lot of its momentum because of its very slow roll-out”.

In short, Trump’s report card as far as Africa is concerned is not a glowing one: at best, he ignored the continent; at worst, he insulted its people. It is for this reason that we in Africa will not miss him at all.

A few Africa watchers have in the past few weeks opined on whether Biden will be better than his predecessor as far as Africa is concerned. The consensus view is that the President-elect, who will be sworn in on January 20, has a not-so-difficult act to follow and will attend to Africa a lot more than Trump was going to, had he secured a second term.

For starters, he will show Africa greater respect and, as a former senior US Democrat told an interviewer last month, US-Africa relations will now be driven by what is good for the two parties, without giving any consideration to third parties.

Further, the US’s return to multilateralism under Biden could translate into stronger US backing for the Africa Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA), which encompasses the continent’s combined $3-trillion gross domestic product and offers a market of 1.2-billion people. This would be a departure from Trump’s approach of pursuing bilateral arrangements such as the one that the US concluded with Kenya.

Since, with the AfCFTA, the African continent deals with third parties like the US as one, the US will likely have to negotiate for a free-trade agreement with the entire continent when the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) expires in 2025. Agoa, a unilateral scheme of preferences that dates back to 2000, has served as the bedrock of trade relations between the US and sub-Saharan Africa. It grants eligible African countries duty-free access to the US market for thousands of products.

Edited by Martin Zhuwakinyu
Creamer Media Senior Deputy Editor

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