Obama needs to choose his African battles with care

His personal prestige will enable him to intervene decisively in
African conflicts — should he choose to do so. His recent call to
President Kgalema Motlanthe, for instance, to discuss the Zimbabwean
crisis, showed his willingness to engage in a more personalised form of
diplomacy.

But he will have to choose carefully, for he needs to establish a record of success if this is not to become a wasting asset.

Obama
began his term of office last month under the strain of a global
financial crisis and a deepening recession, continuing wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan, a near-meltdown in Gaza and potentially explosive
relations with Pakistan, Russia and Iran. Obama's foreign policy team
will be plenty busy before Africa is even considered.

Prioritising
even within Africa will be a challenge. Five African crises demanded
attention on Obama's desk the day he took office — in Sudan, Somalia,
Zimbabwe, the Democratic Republic of Congo and the Niger Delta.

The
appointment of Susan Rice as United Nations (UN) representative with
full cabinet status signals that at least some of Africa's crises will
be given high priority. As a close aide to Obama and a former assistant
secretary of state for Africa, Rice knows Africa and has the ear of the
president.

Furthermore, Rice hails from one of the new
administration's primary intellectual reservoirs — the Brookings
Institution. Brookings produced the recent report, Managing Global
Insecurity, which is a clear indication that thinkers in the Obama team
understand the international community's self-interest in taking more
effective action to help the world's most distressed nations.

The
fact that Obama has brought Samantha Power, author of the disturbing
and influential work on the Rwandan genocide, A Problem from Hell, back
into his inner policy circle and appointed her last week a senior
director at the National Security Council indicates a willingness at
all costs to avoid any repeat of 1994.

For her part,
Rice is likely to throw her efforts into Darfur — the conflict that, to
her, most resembles the Rwandan genocide that occurred while she was in
the national security team of the Clinton administration.

Wearing
her Brookings hat, Rice recently called on Congress to authorise the
use of military force against the government of Sudan, which has been
accused of sponsoring a campaign of terror in the western Sudan region
that has cost more than 400000 lives.

Rice has indicated that she
will push for a more concerted international effort in Sudan. This
renewed pressure comes at a crucial moment for the peace talks in Doha
and the International Criminal Court's decision to pursue Sudanese
President Omar al-Bashir for criminal responsibility for genocide.

And
while it is unlikely that the US will commit frontline troops to Sudan
— beyond providing logistics and intelligence support — US leadership
will be required to get the international community to provide the
personnel, the equipment, the training, and the focus necessary to
enable the African Union to make more of a success of the mission
mandated to it by the UN Security Council.

Somalia has also risen to
the top of the policy pile as piracy has increasingly threatened
maritime trade routes. George Bush's administration sponsored a
security council motion to authorise the use of force, arrests of
pirates by the European and US naval forces on patrol in the area, and
hot pursuit of pirates on to Somali soil. Obama inherited this policy
as well as a situation on the ground, where the transitional government
is falling apart and the occupying Ethiopians are withdrawing.

Further
, there is a strong belief in Washington that the Islamist al-Shabaab
militia, which has extended its control over southern Somalia and is
gunning for Mogadishu, has links to al-Qaeda. The key members of
Obama's foreign policy team — Secretary of State Hillary Clinton,
Defence Secretary Robert Gates, National Security Adviser James Jones
and Rice — all have a hawkish bent, and this makes counterterrorist
strikes in Somalia more likely.

But what will happen to other pressing conflicts, such as Congo , Nigeria and Zimbabwe?

It
is unlikely that the US will be able to tackle more than one African
crisis at a time unless there is a humanitarian case that is so
compelling that it can get onto television screens and engage the
sympathy of ordinary Americans.

Obama is unlikely to veer away from
established policy that African conflicts must ultimately be resolved
by Africans, but given his personal prestige, he could intervene
decisively through a few well-timed president-to-president phone calls.

The
new US president has great prestige in Africa, but this will vanish
quickly if his early interventions are not seen to be successful. He
needs to establish a record of success, if he is to turn the good will
he enjoys on the continent into real political leverage.

Africa is
no longer viewed in Washington merely as a succession of disasters and
humanitarian emergencies. It is a strategically important continent
with growing economic value though it has yet to be fully
mainstreamed.

The acceleration of Africa's integration into the
global economy is, according to Obama's aides, the most fundamental
objective of the new administration. The 6% and upward growth rates
that have been recorded in many African economies since 2000 are
testament to that other, often overlooked reality.

However, the
economic timing is unfortunate: the collapse in commodity prices and
the slowdown in China have put a brake on Africa, and the estimates for
growth this year are being adjusted downwards.

In line with his
long-term strategic thinking for the 21st century, Obama should also
start a strategic dialogue with China aimed at creating a partnership
to bring about a more rule-based international order, which China has a
clear interest and an already declared desire to promote.

Perhaps a
key first brick in this partnership might be an agreement between the
two resource-hungry external powers on the continent, not to turn the
quest for oil, minerals, and agricultural products into a new scramble
for Africa that could unleash competitive resource nationalism.

That would be true multilateralism and one big way in which Obama can give back to the continent of his fathers.

Van
Niekerk is managing director (Washington) of G3, the Good Governance
Group, a risk assessment company that focuses on the investment
environment in Africa, the Middle East, and Russia.