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President Obama will make what is likely to be his last trip to sub-Saharan Africa while in office when he visits Kenya and Ethiopia later this week, just after hosting newly elected Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari at the White House on Monday. After what some have called a “slow start” (associated in part with the 2008 financial crisis), the Obama administration has initiated a formidable list of new U.S. government programs in sub-Saharan Africa, with a high point reached last summer when the president convened the first-ever U.S. Africa Leaders Summit. A defining feature of all the Obama administration’s activities in Africa has been the great emphasis the president has placed on improving the U.S.-African commercial relationship and supporting broader inclusive economic growth throughout the region. Each of his signature programs have consistently included a prominent role for the business community, with Power Africa reportedly leveraging an astounding $20 billion in commitments from the private sector to support badly needed electricity generation and access in the region.
In many ways, all these efforts began when the White House formally published the U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa in 2012, a unique document that sets out key policy areas to guide all U.S. government efforts in the region. Not surprisingly, improved economic growth, business, and trade are featured prominently throughout the strategy, with five specific “actions” identified as primary goals for U.S. federal agencies (see text box). The president’s departure for Kenya and Ethiopia later this week offers an important opportunity to assess where African countries have progressed on these Obama administration goals during the president’s two terms in office. A quick review of relevant indicators reveals that progress has been mixed, so presenting this data might also help both African and U.S. policymakers use this moment to address areas in need of attention and leverage successes to date.
First, though, it should be acknowledged that assessing this type of information is a challenging task. Movement against each of the U.S. government’s strategic focus areas depends on complex “push” and “pull” factors. External (or “push”) factors include the president’s initiatives, but also involve trends far outside his control, like the evolution of commodity prices. In contrast, “pull” factors are domestic variables, which are under the control of African policymakers and to some extent the business community and civil society in the region. These internal dynamics include time-intensive regional efforts to improve macroeconomic and political governance, as well as African initiatives to support competitiveness and economic transformation, among others. Ultimately, Africans are the ones that have to implement initiatives to support growth whether they are backed by the U.S. or homegrown.
1. Promote an enabling environment for trade and investment
Better policies to enable business and trade could support growth and promote an expansion in the benefits of the region’s economies. Accordingly, the Obama administration has committed to encouraging “…legal, regulatory, institutional reforms that contribute to an environment that enables greater trade and investment in sub-Saharan Africa.” The White House further states that this focus builds in U.S. participation in programs like the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative and the Open Government Partnership. Many sub-Saharan African countries have also prioritized creating an enabling environment for trade and investment ; however, the Heritage Foundation, in their annual index on “economic freedom,” which includes 10 measures of regulatory, fiscal, and rule of law restrictions, reports that the region hosts nine of the world’s 26 “repressed economies.”
When measured by a subset of Heritage’s freedom ranking on “open markets” (trade, investment, and financial freedom), sub-Saharan African countries have been fairly static throughout Obama’s terms in office, but have recorded some modest progress. On Heritage’s scale of 0-100, sub-Saharan African countries on average have improved their score from 47 to 51 since 2008, an increase of approximately 9 percent. Big gains do not really register in other regions around the world either, though, with East Asia and the Pacific having a percentage increase of 5 percent and Latin America at 8 percent. In the below graph, we also highlight the president’s destinations of Ethiopia and Kenya, who respectively come in far below and moderately above the regional average, respectively.
Read more: An unfinished agenda: The progress of U.S.-backed economic development goals in Africa
Source: Brookings