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chapter twelve Sub-Saharan Africa Kevin C. Dunn Presidential candidate George W. Bush infamously quipped that the United States had no vital interests in Africa. During its first eight months the Bush administration paid very little direct attention to the African continent. In keeping with the long-standing tradition of U.S.–African engagement, senior policy makers treated the continent as marginal at best, while mid- and lower-level bureaucrats shaped and implemented various policies (Schraeder 1994). But in the wake of September 11 and the declaration of the Bush Doctrine, Africa seems to have achieved a relatively more pronounced place in the worldview of Bush and his administration. This chapter investigates the ways in which Africa currently fits into the Bush administration’s global vision and how African governments have navigated the various expressions of American power. At the outset it should be stressed that the United States is not a unified actor, but speaks to African governments with multiple voices. Primary among those voices are the White House, the State Department, the Pentagon, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which sometimes speaks with a voice distinct from State, the Commerce Department, particularly working through the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and private economic and humanitarian aid actors. The multiplicity of actors often means that the United States engages with the African continent in varied and, at times, con- flictual ways. It also means that there are multiple avenues for the exercise and manifestation of U.S. power and hegemony. In this chapter I understand the concept of hegemony to refer to not only coercive and consensual expressions of power but also the ability to create and shape dominant discourses. As Badredine Arfi notes in his chapter on North Africa, a major element of American hegemony under the George W. Bush administration is its ability to articulate and circulate a dominant discourse—the global war on terror—that frames conversations and practices within world politics. This new discourse in world politics, one of the primary components of the Bush Doctrine, provides a frame for how the United States engages with African states and societies. Africa appears on the American agenda in four ways: as a poten238 Sub-Saharan Africa 239 tial battlefield in its global war on terror; as an alternative oil producer to the Middle East; as a potential beneficiary of the liberal peace agenda, which incorporates both democratization and economic neoliberalism; and as a recipient of humanitarian aid, in particular, assistance for managing the AIDS crisis. In the second section of the chapter I examine the ways in which African political elites have responded to American foreign policy under Bush. Admittedly, generalizing across the entire African continent is largely a futile exercise, given that it will inevitably raise more questions than answers. But such are the pitfalls of a venture as this one. U.S. Interests in Africa In his discussion of U.S. cold war foreign policy toward Africa, Peter Schraeder (1994, 2) claims that American policy makers “tended to ignore the African continent until some sort of politico-military crisis grab[bed] their attention.” But one should be careful not to overstate the case. The United States was kept occupied with maintaining African cold war allies like Mobutu Sese Seko in Zaire and with trying to undermine Marxist–Leninist regimes in places like Angola and Mozambique as well as with managing the devastating impacts of Structural Adjustment Programs (SAPs) imposed on much of the continent by Americandirected International Financial Institutions (IFIs) and the more complex effects of American private economic actors, particularly regarding commodities like oil, gold, diamonds, coffee, and tea. With the end of the cold war it seemed as if the African continent slipped further off the agenda of American senior policy makers. The formal apparatus of American power seemed less interested in Africa, but private economic actors remained active on the continent as emerging markets in minerals like coltan joined long-standing interests in oil and diamonds. As a result of the ideological shift caused by the 1994 Republican Revolution, USAID and the State Department became less engaged with Africa than they had been during the cold war. Cold war allies, such as Mobutu in Zaire and Jonas Savimbi in Angola, lost favor in Washington and were left to suffer the consequences of their actions alone. After a perceived disastrous defeat in Somalia the United States swore off direct military engagement with the continent...

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