Out of Kilter: U.S. Assistance to Sub-Saharan Africa

By Raymond W. Copson, independent scholar and lecturer at George Washington University and the Johns Hopkins University

American economic assistance to sub-Saharan Africa is increasing, and the United States could well meet the target, set at the Gleneagles 2005 G8 summit, of doubling aid to the region by 2010, as compared to 2004. According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), U.S. Official Development Assistance – aid - to Africa in 2004 totaled about $3.5 billion. The George Bush Administration’s 2008 budget, still being considered by Congress, proposes aid to Africa in excess of $5.5 billion. Since Congress is generally sympathetic to Africa the final total could well be higher. And emergency food aid for Africa will likely be taken from the U.S. emergency food reserve. Meanwhile, President Bush has proposed a sharp increase in AIDS spending starting in 2009, and many in Congress want to commit even more to the AIDS struggle. US aid to Africa could well exceed $6 billion in 2009, on track to reach the $7 billion in 2010.

While this increase in ODA is to be welcomed, it is fair to question the degree to which it will in fact contribute to growth and development in the sub-Saharan region. Some $3.4 billion of the $5.5 billion proposed would go to the Global HIV/AIDS Initiative (GHAI), the key component of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). Another $458 million would be spent under another health program, the Child Survival and Health fund. Improvements in health are essential to Africa’s development, and no one who supports a brighter future for the region would advocate a reduction in health spending. Saving lives alone justifies such expenditures. PEPFAR reports, among other achievements, that it was supporting treatment for more than 805,000 HIV-infected Africans by the end of 2006. Expenditures on health infrastructure and professional training can contribute to economic growth in other sectors as well. And there is a strong political argument in favor of aid for better health among Africa’s poor. Such aid enjoys broad support in Congress and among the American people.

Nonetheless, something is out of kilter when two-thirds of U.S. economic assistance is going into the health sector and relatively little to other sectors that are also vital to development, such as education, the promotion of democracy, agriculture, infrastructure and communications. Most of the funding for this sort of assistance comes from the Development Assistance programme administered by USAID. The government has requested just $490 million for Africa for this programme in 2008 - down from $596 million 2006. Congress will probably add a little to this year’s amount, but much more must be given through the Development Assistance programme if the United States is to make a balanced contribution to African development. Strengthening African economies broadly could do much to improve underlying conditions that contribute to health problems in Africa.

The Millennium Challenge Account (MCA) program, launched in 2004, was to have been a major vehicle for directing additional funds toward African development. It provides aid in exchange for improvements in governance and economic policy. However only 10 African countries, some of Africa’s smallest economies, have met the MCA criteria so only very little funding has actually gone to Africa. Countries actually receiving MCA assistance, such as Ghana and Madagascar, have seen USAID funding cut – contrary to assurances that MCA aid would be additional to USAID development assistance. Concerned by the slow rate of disbursement, Congress is funding the MCA at less than $2 billion annually worldwide, far below the $5 billion envisaged. The MCA is working with several African governments to help them meet its requirements. As more qualify, the program might well be worth expanding, if the rate of disbursements could be accelerated and if MCA assistance became truly additional aid, not a substitute for DA.

AIDS funding through PEPFAR itself seems out of kilter. The law requires that 20% of spending is devoted to prevention and 55% goes to treatment. Congress made this provision to make sure that treatment with lifesaving anti-retrovirals would be made widely available in Africa. But experts agree that the key to stopping the pandemic lies in prevention. The program has been dogged by controversies over other issues as well, such as the commitment, made by a Republican-dominated Congress, that one-third of the already scarce prevention resources be devoted to programmes that promoted abstinence-until-marriage. The Administration’s consistent under-funding of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria has been another problem. PEPFAR is up for renewal shortly. This offers an opportunity to correct imbalances in the programme.

The Global HIV/AIDS Initiative concentrates on 12 “focus countries” in Africa, and three other focus countries elsewhere. GHAI resources are vast so this targeting has put the GHAI recipients at the top of the list of overall US aid recipients in Africa. This makes South Africa, far from the neediest country in terms of development, the number one African recipient of US aid. In 2008 it will receive $608 million in 2008. Nigeria, which would hardly need any aid if it were well governed, will be the second largest recipient, scheduled for $530 million. Meanwhile promising economies elsewhere in Africa are receiving only modest amounts of US aid. The solution is not to reduce GHAI funding but to increase development assistance to promote broad-based development.

Another surprising large recipient is Sudan. Heavy resources are being channeled into southern Sudan to encourage implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement. Darfur could benefit as well if a genuine peace agreement is concluded soon. Almost $680 million is given - mostly for Southern Sudan for emergency food aid and aid for strengthening law enforcement. The Administration is also seeking $390 million for the United Nations peacekeeping mission in Sudan (UNMIS). These sums may well be justified by the significance of Sudan for Africa as a whole but there are powerful advocacy organizations in the US, some of them based among church groups and evangelical organizations important to the Administration and to some in Congress. However, a balanced approach to peace in Africa would do more to promote stabilization and recovery in other conflict situations. Apart from UNMIS, funding for every other UN operation in Africa would fall under the Administration’s aid proposal, and the Administration has failed to request funding for the African Union peacekeeping operation in Darfur.

There are also contradictions between broad US Africa policy and development objectives. Policymakers say they support an expansion of Africa’s trade to promote development, but neither the Administration nor Congress will take the steps needed to reduce US trade barriers. The US Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) programme, which allows African producers special access to the US market, is modest. Growth in US – Africa trade has been almost entirely in petroleum imports. The United States provides valuable assistance for democracy promotion and improved governance in Africa, strengthening the capabilities of parliaments, for example, and of civil society organizations and electoral commissions as well. But this aid is quite limited in scale and its effect is undermined by the Administration’s cultivation of authoritarian regimes that are oil-rich and far from transparent such as Equatorial Guinea, or are considered important in the “War on Terror”, such as Ethiopia. The United States supports peacekeeping and recovery from conflict in Africa, but the Administration backed an Ethiopian intervention in Somalia that sowed turmoil in the Horn of Africa. US diplomats should have considered other options for bringing peace to Somalia before supporting the Ethiopian intervention.

Africa policy generally seems to be shifting towards the military dimension and away from development. The Administration has created the Pentagon’s Trans-Sahara Counterterrorism Initiative (TSCTI), the Africa Coastal/Border Security Program, and now, most notably the new Africa Command (AFRICOM). Military officials maintain that “standing up” AFRICOM in 2007 is costing just $50 million, but expenses will mount exponentially in future years. Military planners say they recognize that the lack of development lies at the heart of Africa’s security problems, and that consequently their programs will have a development component. But the fact is that development knowledge and development skills in the US Government are found principally at USAID, where the aid budget is not growing. Furthermore USAID has been placed under the direct control of the Department of State in pursuit of geo-political and strategic objectives.

The entire US relationship with sub-Saharan Africa seems increasingly out of kilter. Poverty is at the heart of nearly all of Africa’s difficulties. Any sensible Africa policy must focus first and foremost on development.

Raymond W. Copson lectures on African politics and development at George Washington University and the Johns Hopkins University and is the author of The United States and Africa: Bush Policy and Beyond.

The United States and Africa: Bush Policy and Beyond in the African Arguments series is available from Zed Books http://www.zedbooks.co.uk/