US shortchanging Africa is penny wise and pound foolish

At the G-7 meeting in Sicily at the end of May, it was reported that when the agenda turned to Africa, and Niger’s President Mahamadou Issoufou started to speak, President Donald Trump removed his headphones and opted out of the French-to-English translation. In those remarks Issoufou said, “Be it Niger, a transit nation, or the countries of origin, it is only through development that we will prevent illegal migration.”

It is impossible to know if the U.S. president’s actions were prompted by fatigue, after a long meeting during a multi-country trip, or by disinterest. For Africa watchers, the story adds to the mounting evidence that the Trump administration doesn’t consider Africa a priority, nor core to U.S. national security interests, and this really concerns me.

I have worked in Africa for 30 years, and have seen what happens when the U.S. walks away, abandoning the playing field to a host of bad actors, internal and transnational. The consequences are devastating.

{mosads}In my memoir, “Choosing the Hero,” I recall the summer of 1997, when the African continent was bedeviled by warlords, dictators and arms dealers, and the West African nation of Liberia was being pushed toward a hasty election by international stakeholders which, if not postponed, would assuredly legitimize the rule of the notorious warlord, Charles Taylor.

The Clinton administration was distracted by domestic matters and focused on the wars in the former Yugoslavia. They just wanted to check the Liberian election box and move on. My mission was to keep that from happening.

Just after the Fourth of July recess in 1997, I marched into the Harry S. Truman building in search of President Clinton’s special envoy to Liberia and made my case to the disinterested administration official. I pleaded for U.S. leadership in stopping the democratic charade and warned that if Taylor were to be legitimized through a flawed election, he would be a cancer for the entire sub-region — Sierra Leone, Guinea and Cote d’Ivoire. It wouldn’t be only the people of Liberia to suffer.

That’s when the diplomat shut me down, pronouncing, “We believe in the policy of redemption.” Translated from diplo-speak: If the guy wins, so be it. It’s not our problem.

Charles Taylor went on to win the 1997 presidential elections. As predicted, his policies of theft and intimidation collapsed the Liberian state, and his funding of rebel groups destabilized the entire region. The world came to learn a new vernacular in the vein of Taylor, including the terms “blood diamonds” and “child soldiers.” Some 200,000 people died, and millions more were displaced. The U.S. Embassy in Monrovia became the most evacuated American mission in the world, costing of hundreds of millions of dollars to U.S. taxpayers.

Six years later, America returned. President George W. Bush, with the bipartisan support of the U.S. Congress, dispatched Marines off of Liberia’s coast to force the exit of Charles Taylor. Congress appropriated funding for the Special Court of Sierra Leone to try Taylor for war crimes, as well as to stand up a U.N. force to stabilize the country, the United Nations Mission in Liberia (UNMIL), creating the conditions for the holding of free and fair elections. In November 2005, Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was elected president of the Republic of Liberia, becoming the first woman democratically elected to lead an African nation.

Charles Taylor now sits in prison, convicted for crimes against humanity. Today, every country in the West African sub region is a democracy, moving toward sustainable economic growth and regional integration through the Economic Community of West Africa States (ECOWAS).

Warlords have been ousted. Democracy is taking hold. A middle class is emerging.Technology is connecting farmers to market and entrepreneurs to global opportunities. There is a young generation demanding accountability in governance.

But progress is never a straight line. Challenges remain, and new threats have emerged that are just as great as they were a generation ago and just as consequential to U.S. interests.

African economies must generate economic opportunities and livelihoods for its population of 1.2 billion people, where more than 60 percent are under the age of 35. This demographic, empowered through education and jobs, can power Africa’s continued transformation, or conversely, a youthful population bereft of hope, could be increasingly drawn to radical ideologies and would be more likely to embark on treacherous  boat rides across the Mediterranean to Europe.

Africa can tip either way, and the U.S. must have its hands on the scale. It must continue to invest in the long game.

Our European allies see the urgency. German Chancellor Angela Merkel is seeking to bolster the economies of Africa with a Marshall-like plan. The German government stated, “If the youth of Africa can’t find work or a future in their own countries, it won’t be hundreds of thousands, but millions that will make their way to Europe.”

So too do our development partners see the urgency. African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina said, “If you don’t create jobs in Africa fast then the whole terrorism thing that you see in Africa is just the tip of the iceberg. Look at all the young people heading for the Mediterranean Sea. The future of Africa doesn’t lie on the bottom of the Mediterranean Sea. It lies in a more prosperous Africa.”

The U.S. president has an opportunity for a do-over. Let’s hope he takes it.

The G-20 Summit is fast approaching on July 7, and the agenda centers on Africa and the problem of migration. This time, President Trump needs to keep his headphones on and hear the words of his African colleagues. He needs to be staffed by a team of African experts who can give him perspective and caution him that if the U.S. doesn’t invest now, the costs in the medium-term could be exponentially higher and the potential for disruption to the global order significant.

Consider the Liberian example. Experienced hands could also explain to him that an African initiative would have support from members of Congress from both parties, and they could perhaps remind him that in 2003, when the war in Iraq created a toxic partisan environment, Africa was one of the few places where former President George W. Bush found bipartisan consensus. 

K. Riva Levinson is president and CEO of KRL International LLC, a D.C.-based consultancy that works in the world’s emerging markets. Levinson is the award-winning author of “Choosing the Hero: My Improbable Journey and the Rise of Africa’s First Woman President” (Kiwai Media, June 2016). Follow her on Twitter @RivaLevinson.

The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the views of The Hill.