Obama to focus more on Africa

PRESIDENT Barack Obama is to ramp up trade and spying in Africa in his second term and possibly use lethal aerial drones to capture or kill elusive warlord Joseph Kony.

After largely ignoring sub-Saharan Africa in his first term, two leading US foreign policy experts told the Sunday Times the re-elected president would turn to his father's continent to pad his legacy, including a likely trip to SA.

Professor Dennis Jett, a former US ambassador to Mozambique and now Africa policy expert at Penn State University, said former president George Bush's "principle positive legacy" was his Pepfar Aids programme in Africa, and that the Democrat president, too, would boost his achievements in the one place where his Republican opponents won't fight his initiatives.

Meanwhile, rumours swirled in Washington DC on Friday that Senator John Kerry, a former presidential candidate with an interest in African development, could replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.

Matthew Baum, professor of public policy at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, said: "The joke is that US presidents suddenly discover Africa in their second term.

"Obama will look to less politically contentious places like sub-Saharan Africa to achieve concrete goals. I'd be very surprised if he didn't visit Israel, but it's also not at all unlikely that he will find himself in South Africa too."

During his 2008 campaign, his senior Africa policy expert, Witney Schneidman, said Obama believed Bush had failed to monitor China's encroachment into Africa, and that he would seek to dispatch intelligence officers there to assess any threats to US interests.

Baum said a "quiet" American challenge to China's support of rogue African governments and the pursuit of raw materials, was now likely to be stepped up during the second term.

"The president clearly wants to ensure that China is a responsible player in Africa. I hear a lot of concern about China in Africa here at the Kennedy School, though not much at all from the White House. It's quietly on the agenda," he said.

Baum said it was unlikely that Obama would end the American farming subsidies which, according to some reports, have devastated agriculture in many African countries.

According to Foreign Policy magazine, Obama's initial focus on SA will be to secure tighter agreements on isolating Iran, eliminating oil imports and technology transfers as well as boosting trade, good governance initiatives and access to Southern African markets.

MTN's controversial telecommunications deal with Iran's government, and the links between one of Obama's advisers to MTN, is likely to be an initial diplomatic stumbling block.

SA's ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, said he hoped Obama would support the renewal of the crucial African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), a duty-free trade regulation for African exporters which is due to expire in 2015.

A foreign policy article this week said Africa presented a huge opportunity for Obama's legacy, but that he had been "disappointing" so far.

"When the authoritarian leaders of Rwanda, Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo hijacked elections to cement their grip on power, the Obama White House failed to unambiguously stand with the disenfranchised voters."

But experts said Obama's first Africa priority was to kill or capture Kony, whom he recently described as "a vicious killer" and whose arrest was central to his new "regional security strategy" in Central Africa.

A recent investigation by the Washington Postrevealed that Obama had already authorised the expanded use of private security companies to hunt down Kony and his Lords Resistance Army rebels. Obama has also dispatched 100 special forces to the Central African Republic to head the hunt.

Analysts said Kony's capture would also help Obama with his domestic economic agenda, with a buy-in from arch rivals who normally oppose his initiatives, like evangelical Republican Senator James Inhofe, known to have a loathing for the elusive warlord. The Post report suggested it was likely that the use of an unmanned "drone", which Obama has used to kill al-Qaeda leaders in the Middle East, would be authorised.