In the week that Hillary Clinton arrives for her seven-country tour of Africa, how is Obama seen throughout the continent since taking office?
Much has been made of Obama’s Kenyan heritage in his popularity rankings, but the reality is that he is following a path set by his predecessor in the White House. For all the criticism and complaints about the Bush administration (which we won’t get in to here), George W did set a strong US policy for Africa, including the Millennium Challenge Corporation and the U.S. President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, the largest commitment by any country to combat HIV/AIDS in history.
While Obama’s trip to Ghana, followed so quickly by Hillary’s tour, make for a very public show of the US prioritisation of Africa, the US already enjoyed 73% approval from 33 Sub-Saharan African nations in 2008 – compared to just 34% across the world on average (Gallup).
Gallup has released further stats from March / April of this year that show that six of the seven countries surveyed (Kenya, Cameroon, South Africa, Uganda, Senegal and Mauritania) have seen an increase in approval of the US leadership since 2008. From an increase of 25% in Cameroon to an 11% drop in the final country – Djibouti – media approval across the seven went from 80% in 2008 to 87% in 2009. Substantial – but I’m not sure it points to more than any global media frenzy around the first Black American President would produce.
More interesting would be to compare approval of the US with sentiment towards the Chinese across Africa, for example. Why do we continue to hold the US up as the most important benchmark? However, despite the increasing influence and involvement of the BRIC countries in Africa, the suggestion that the US is trying to counter China’s rise in Africa with Clinton’s tour is “is a Cold War paradigm, not a reflection of where we are”, as the assistant secretary of State for African Affairs told Bloomberg.
While we read, write and blog about the impact of the Obama administration on Africa, are we obsessing about the topic by force of habit, by virtue of the media profile the topic enjoys, or because it actually counts?
Indeed, what difference will the trip make to the average African questioned by Gallup? To the major oil and mineral exporters in the countries that Mrs. Clinton is visiting – a few tax breaks or trade agreements, perhaps. But looking back to the statistics, Gallup states that at least 3/10 respondents in each country in their survey said the U.S. president makes a difference to their country. Even given the variation from country to country, that still leaves an awful lot of people in Africa that feel the US president makes little or no difference to their country – a far more pertinent statistic in my opinion.
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Obama. Show all posts
Tuesday, 4 August 2009
Wednesday, 8 July 2009
"Make investing easy, Africa told"
That’s the headline on the front page of Business Day’s Companies & Markets section today. That’s an issue we talk about a lot, often in the context of the role of media in developing a healthy investment climate. It also came up at the World Economic Forum (WEF), as we outlined in a post below.
But it seems it takes a bold statement by Standard Chartered at a conference in Sandton to make the news. At the Banking Outlook conference, Steve Brice, head of global markets Southern Africa, talked about the need to counter the impact of the financial crisis, the impact of which was not yet fully understood on the continent.
Plenty of reasons why African countries are suffering in the downturn, but his advice to “stick to their knitting” and be internally focused, seems to go against his over-arching call to be more externally-focused to attract foreign investors. No wonder we’re not making this easy on ourselves..
US President Barack Obama takes a different approach in an interview with AllAfrica.com today, stating African nations must clean up corruption and end political instability in order to attract the investment needed to prosper. ‘Speaking in advance of a visit this week to Ghana, Obama said there was a direct correlation between governance and prosperity and urged African leaders to do better.’
In terms of ease of doing business, the average ranking of sub-Saharan countries is 138 out of 181 countries globally. So there are worse places. Remember, this is not a comment on the attractiveness of doing business, but in terms of how to lift Africa up the rankings to a place that is easy to do business, there doesn’t seem to be a simple solution. The measures that Brice puts forward, developing long-term interest rate and forward foreign exchange markets are – on his own admission - “easy to say and difficult to do”. Obama’s solution of ending corruption and political instability is a pretty tall order too..
Raila Odinga, Prime Minister of Kenya told WEF that Africa has to knock down the hurdles to doing business, such as lengthy legal and operational processes - but this has to be permanent, not temporary measures. Omari Issa, CEO, Investment Climate Facility, commented that African media needs to be part of changing the perception of Africa as a good place for business, as investors still often look to international media for info – and it needs to come from the inside.
This raises the question of whether it is just an external perception – or a reality - that Africa is a hard place to do business? Will it always be more difficult than an America or Germany, and investors just need to get over it and go for it? While there are undoubtedly people and processes that could make foreign investment easier, is it just a different way of doing business, which also sees different returns?
I don’t mean to push the onus of finding a solution back on to the international investors, but like any form of regulation or policy change, it is external pressure that will make things happen. Internal change or any kind of self-regulation is never easy, without the threat of losing something – and foreign investment is no small thing – especially in a downturn. We can at least agree on that.
But it seems it takes a bold statement by Standard Chartered at a conference in Sandton to make the news. At the Banking Outlook conference, Steve Brice, head of global markets Southern Africa, talked about the need to counter the impact of the financial crisis, the impact of which was not yet fully understood on the continent.
Plenty of reasons why African countries are suffering in the downturn, but his advice to “stick to their knitting” and be internally focused, seems to go against his over-arching call to be more externally-focused to attract foreign investors. No wonder we’re not making this easy on ourselves..
US President Barack Obama takes a different approach in an interview with AllAfrica.com today, stating African nations must clean up corruption and end political instability in order to attract the investment needed to prosper. ‘Speaking in advance of a visit this week to Ghana, Obama said there was a direct correlation between governance and prosperity and urged African leaders to do better.’
In terms of ease of doing business, the average ranking of sub-Saharan countries is 138 out of 181 countries globally. So there are worse places. Remember, this is not a comment on the attractiveness of doing business, but in terms of how to lift Africa up the rankings to a place that is easy to do business, there doesn’t seem to be a simple solution. The measures that Brice puts forward, developing long-term interest rate and forward foreign exchange markets are – on his own admission - “easy to say and difficult to do”. Obama’s solution of ending corruption and political instability is a pretty tall order too..
Raila Odinga, Prime Minister of Kenya told WEF that Africa has to knock down the hurdles to doing business, such as lengthy legal and operational processes - but this has to be permanent, not temporary measures. Omari Issa, CEO, Investment Climate Facility, commented that African media needs to be part of changing the perception of Africa as a good place for business, as investors still often look to international media for info – and it needs to come from the inside.
This raises the question of whether it is just an external perception – or a reality - that Africa is a hard place to do business? Will it always be more difficult than an America or Germany, and investors just need to get over it and go for it? While there are undoubtedly people and processes that could make foreign investment easier, is it just a different way of doing business, which also sees different returns?
I don’t mean to push the onus of finding a solution back on to the international investors, but like any form of regulation or policy change, it is external pressure that will make things happen. Internal change or any kind of self-regulation is never easy, without the threat of losing something – and foreign investment is no small thing – especially in a downturn. We can at least agree on that.
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