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After years of neglect by successive US presidents, Africans doubt that Joe Biden’s globally celebrated electoral victory last week will bring miracles to the world’s poorest continent.
While South Africa’s Nelson Mandela Foundation (NMF) called the defeat of incumbent President Donald Trump a “relief,” other responses were more cautious.
“We celebrate the fact that we will not have to watch him undermine democratic institutions … for another four years,” said the Foundation, which is named after South Africa’s first black president.
“Now begins the daunting task for the United States to undo the deepening racism, xenophobia and afrophobia of the Trump administration,” he added.
Trump, still president until January, did not make a good impression on Africans during his tenure.
Less than a year after taking office, he infamously praised “Nambia’s” healthcare system – mispronouncing Namibia – during a speech at the United Nations.
Months later he referred to Haiti and the African nations as “shitty countries” during a closed-door meeting at the White House, sparking global outrage.
Many were disgusted by Trump’s “barely respectful attitude” and restrictive immigration policies, said analyst Ousmane Sene, director of the Dakar-based West Africa Research Center.
“During these four years (Trump) fueled disenchantment and indifference,” he told AFP. “It’s evident from how little interest the African media had in the United States during that period.”
Biden has vowed to reverse many of the Trump administration’s immigration reforms that tightened restrictions on asylum seekers and refugees.
Sahel security
Under Trump, the United States focused primarily on its fight against terrorism and domestic aid programs. Politics, diplomacy and economic reforms were put aside.
Trump never set foot in Africa during his tenure. By MANDEL NGAN (AFP / Archive) “Four wasted years,” said Senegalese political analyst Rene Lake, during which international relations were dominated by trade with China.
In Africa, Washington simply finalized pre-established security agreements with Ghana, Niger, and Senegal.
US troops also provided “vital support” to French forces in the troubled Sahel region, said US studies professor Pape Malick Ba at Senegal’s Cheikh Anta Diop University.
According to Ba, Trump never established a “specific strategy” toward Africa, which made him less popular than his predecessors Barack Obama and George W. Bush.
“(Trump) never set foot on the continent,” he added, recalling that the president had even fired former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson during his first trip to Africa in 2018.
For economic powerhouse Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, US policy under Trump was “inert, ineffective and lacking a moral compass,” analysts Judd Devermont and Matthew Page wrote in a joint column.
A “chaotic” example of this, the American couple said, was the inability of the United States to speak during widespread demonstrations against police brutality and bad governance last month.
Africans had high hopes for Barack Obama, the first black president of the United States. By Jim WATSON (AFP / Archive) Biden reacted to the State Department after security forces fired live bullets at a crowd of unarmed protesters in the Nigerian megacity of Lagos, killing 12 according to Amnesty International.
“This illustrates how Washington’s approach to Nigeria has become unconscious and unresponsive,” Page told AFP.
Return to Obama politics
A Biden administration is likely to put more pressure on the Nigerian government to address human rights violations, Nigerian geopolitical think tank SBM Intelligence said in a report.
But a former Nigerian ambassador to the United States, George Obiozor, said major changes were unlikely.
Speaking on Nigerian news channel Arise TV, Obiozor noted that ties between the United States and Africa did not even progress much under Obama, the first black president of the United States, in whom Africans had placed great hopes.
Biden is expected to ease diplomatic tensions. By Angela Weiss (AFP / Archive) “Expectations of improving relations between Africa and the United States after the victory of Joe Biden … will amount to disappointment and disappointment,” predicted Obiozor.
Analyst Lake, however, said Biden is likely to re-engage the United States with the rest of the world.
“We can imagine it will be a kind of third term for Obama,” Lake told the Senegalese media.
Biden is expected to ease diplomatic tensions, fix relations with the World Health Organization and rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, from which the United States withdrew this year.
Meanwhile, Trump refuses to budge and prepares to challenge the vote count in court.
Their tantrums are not the best example for young African democracies, some sarcastic commentators pointed out, evoking America’s new status as a “banana republic.”
Trump’s attitude runs the risk of encouraging reluctant African leaders to “play by the rules of democracy,” Chadian human rights activist Jean Bosco Manga worried.
“As Nelson Mandela used to say, a good leader knows when to resign,” said the NMF.
“It is not too late for Trump to embrace dignity, for himself and for others.”
