Symbolic and geopolitical undertones

World leaders like Obama need to reflect on which values are acceptable in Africa

To a substantial extent, US President Barack Obama's visit to Africa has been seen as a homecoming of sorts because Kenya is the birthplace of his late father, Barack Obama Senior. The media hype, particularly in Kenya and the United States, has been primed on the symbolism of the first African-American president beating a path back to his roots. Observers may be forgiven for imagining that symbolism as the main agenda of his trip to Kenya.

To dismiss offhand the emotional dimensions of Obama's Kenyan, and therefore, African heritage is to trivialize significant US political and cultural capital toward Africa. Indeed, a full-blown analysis of the symbolic narrative of Obama's African heritage is yet to be written. When such an analysis is undertaken, a major point will be that Obama is good for Africa, not so much because he can donate goodies to Africa, but because it's a demonstration that any African can rise to the pinnacle of his or her dreams. Such analysis would perhaps have Obama's heritage as a major spine in US public diplomacy toward Africa and, therefore, the springboard for political and economic ties relative to other countries intent on doing business in and with Africa.

To allocate undue weight to Obama's filial connections with Kenya and Africa, to the exclusion or downgrading of other factors motivating his visits to Kenya and Ethiopia, is to miss a point as far as other political and economic considerations are concerned.

Few can doubt the fact that the main agenda of Obama's visit was to preside over the sixth Global Entrepreneurship Summit, a signature initiative of his presidency. The symbolic aspects of the visit are best and properly analyzed as a sub-set of the goals of the GES. As such, a realistic analysis should begin not with the symbolic perspectives, but with the goals of the GES, which is in turn the crucible for other economic and political ties that the US is pursuing in Africa. Indeed, a point that seems to elude the grasp of pundits focused on emotive symbolism is that the GES brims with both Afro-centric as well as geopolitical implications, advertently or inadvertently.

In the world of geopolitics, any discussion of US initiatives in Kenya is bound to draw in what that means for the so-called emerging economies, of which China is a leader among equals. While symbolism would have it that Obama's presidency in the US was seen as a boon for Africa, this coincided with China's outpacing the US and other Western powers to become Africa's leading economic partner. Today, China's trade with Africa stands at well over $200 billion, three times higher than the volume of trade between the US and Africa. An apt analysis would therefore seek to find out if the symbolic stature of Obama in Africa can be of strategic value in the US' attempt to unseat China from its pole position in Africa.

Taking cognizance of emerging powers generally, and China's role specifically, in the US' Africa strategy is not idle talk. In an agenda-setting media appearance on the BBC before he embarked on his "homecoming" trip, Obama pointed out that China is "able to funnel an awful lot of money into Africa, basically in exchange for raw materials that are being extracted from Africa".

He then proceeded to assert that the US would remain focused on the promotion of values, an aphorism for the ideals of democracy and human rights as the centerpiece of US engagement with Africa. In other words, while the US structures initiatives such as the GES among others, these will always be bundled with governance considerations.

Therein lies a conundrum. Sections of the elite in some, if not most, African nations are bound to resist certain aspects of American values that would be exported to Africa as indivisible from packages of economic engagement. Therein also lies a point of departure in Africa's global engagement with emerging powers that craft their relations with governance-neutrality.

The upshot of a holistic analysis that accounts for the so-called Obama mania, as well as pragmatic considerations, is that one has to carefully distinguish between which values will be acceptable in Africa from those likely to be framed controversially. Obama's African heritage is widely accepted, but when he dabbles in values such as gay rights, the US certainly finds itself in choppy waters. On the other hand, countries such as China are unlikely to court the kind of controversy that has negative implications for crucial economic engagement with Africa.

The author is a PhD from the Communication University of China in Beijing and research associate at the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

(China Daily Africa Weekly 07/31/2015 page11)