The sight of Africa's leaders jetting to China en masse got the executive director of Africa No Filter thinking... about economic leverage, about optics, about strategy and about lessons learned from a well-endowed friend.
Opinion piece by Moky Makura
I have a friend, who for the sake of her privacy, we will call Imani. When we were in our 20s, everyone wanted to date Imani. She was attractive, intelligent and had a great personality. Imani enjoyed the attention, but she was also very strategic about it; her rent was paid, she went on trips and had an extensive wardrobe of designer clothes, shoes and bags. Without judging her morals, she knew her value and used it to get what she wanted, on her terms and in her backyard.
Imani in her heyday reminds me of Africa today. We are being courted by so many countries in so many ways because of what we have to offer, but we haven’t managed to close a deal that gets us what we want – economic freedom.
The latest example of this courtship ritual played out very publicly and elaborately in China. A choreographed display of diplomatic pageantry in the form of dancers, flag-waving children, banquets, motorcades and guards of honour greeted African leaders at the latest China-Africa Summit in Beijing last week.
The question that sprung to my mind was, why were the leaders of China not coming to Africa but felt it appropriate to summon African leaders to Beijing? And why did leaders from at least 50 countries turn up to stand in line for their bilaterals in China when they were holding such powerful cards?
The continent is sitting on immense leverage. Africa is home to the world’s largest reserves of untapped arable land and critical minerals for the green transition. Surely if you have something everyone wants, they should come to you.
Kenya’s President William Ruto appeared to agree with this sentiment when at the Mo Ibrahim Governance Weekend in May 2023, he said to loud applause; "It is not intelligent for 54 African Presidents to go and sit before one president from another country for a summit.” The irony is that President Ruto was amongst that delegation of heads of state in China last week.
African leaders travelling abroad to engage in dialogue is not inherently problematic. Diplomacy, after all, is built on cooperation. It is about the optics – one leader summoning 54 shows there is an imbalance in the power dynamics. If African leaders are serious about reshaping the continent’s global image and influence, they must begin by reclaiming their power and it starts with who gets to host.
By continually making these pilgrimages, our leaders are reinforcing outdated perceptions of the continent as subordinate and dependent. These are the lingering vestiges of colonial hangovers that continue to shape modern geopolitics.
Apart from the optics, these summits have the tendency to frame Africa as a monolith. Most begin with the name of the foreign power hosting them — "Forum on China-Africa Cooperation", "U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit" or the "Russia-Africa Summit" — indicating their importance and perpetuating the idea that Africa’s role in the global order is secondary. If you think this is trivial, consider the negotiations that take place over name placement in movie credits in Hollywood.
But another issue that should be considered is the fact that these summits come with an environmental cost. Imagine the carbon footprint of delivering 54 heads of state to one destination. Wouldn't it make more sense for President Xi Jinping and his delegation to jet to the continent for the visit? That's why ex-President Barack Obama’s previous blitz in a few African countries carried weight, cosmetically at least, compared to countless trips made by African leaders to Washington. Since 2015, no other American president has visited Africa – not counting President Joe Biden’s brief stopover in Egypt for COP27.
Perhaps hosting these summits on African soil would be a good start to reimagining a new power dynamic. Visualise the next U.S.-Africa summit being held in Addis Ababa, Lagos or Nairobi, with African leaders setting the agenda and foreign dignitaries coming to the continent to negotiate. That’s the kind of diplomatic heft Africa should be pulling off. So why don’t we?
Isn’t it time for our leaders to break free from this diplomatic dependency and insist that the world meets them on their terms and on African soil? It’s something my friend Imani did very well and there are many lessons to be learned from her approach to suitors, the most important of which is ‘know your worth’. Are our leaders listening?
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