Kamala In Africa: What Could Go Wrong?

April 2, 2023

During the first Cold War, sub-Saharan Africa was red hot with proxy wars. With China and Russia continuing to increase their footprints in the region, Cold War II looks like a sequel, perhaps with a different ending.

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Given the consequences of losing Africa to despotic nations, it makes sense that the United States is strengthening alliances there. This past week, Kamala promised $139 million in direct assistance to Ghana and $100 million to help counter armed Islamic militants in the region.

Presently, Ghana is experiencing an armed inter-tribal conflict between the non-Muslim Kusasi and the Muslim Mamprusi, who have attracted Al Qaeda. Inter-tribal and inter-religious conflicts have played an outsized role in Africa’s history, and it seems like a good strategy to strengthen relationships by helping Africans address racism and terrorism.

Image: Kamala Harris in Africa. YouTube screen grab.

The problem is that, despite the promised money, don’t expect America to make a difference in what’s happening in Africa. Instead, America’s help will once again exacerbate racism and terrorism and do little to endear Africans to racist America.

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Unlike Central America, Kamala can’t get to work tackling the root causes of this conflict in Ghana because the conflict’s origins arise from racism in the forms of tribalism and religionism. This is probably hard for Kamala to process.

Like Kelisa Wing, the recently demoted DOD DEI Education chief, Kamala probably sees blacks as incapable of racism. She would be bewildered by a statement such as this one:

The good news according to Salifu Bashru, an elder of the Mamprusi people, is that if al Qaeda militants attack they’ll probably kill his rivals from the Kusasi community first.

That she is doling out millions that won’t end racial terrorism but will, instead, stoke them, may be impossible for her to grasp. If she knew history, she made take note of the fact that American aid money during Cold War I had the same negative outcome.

American foreign aid landed in the pockets of the tribal supporters of our African allies, stoking armed conflict with the members of opposing tribes. During Cold War I, the outcomes of foreign aid were abysmal. Per capita incomes in sub-Saharan Africa in the 1990s were much the same as in the 1960s before those nations became independent. It’s likely the same will occur in Cold War II because longstanding ethnic-tribal and religious conflicts in Africa haven’t really changed.

Throughout the Cold War, African nations were hosting, officially or unofficially, internal national leadership competitions. A candidate from one tribal-ethnic group aligned with the First World and another tribal-ethnic group with the Second World. This was a recipe for deadly and damaging civil wars that doubled as First- and Second-World proxy wars.

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There were more than 100 African civil wars during Cold War I. In the end, there was little gain for either communism or democracy. National tribal-ethnic leaders professing to be communist, anti-communist, or democratic were virtually all dictators. First and Second world powers condoned despotism, corruption, terrorism, and racism because speaking out risked alienating an alleged ideological ally.

The first decade of the post-Cold War period permitted first-world democracies to secure commitments to a multi-party democracy that would provide an opportunity to address racism in exchange for foreign aid. However, in the early 2000s, China became an alternative source of foreign aid with no conditions on governing or racism. China doesn’t care about despotism or racism in Africa; it cares about access to its natural resources.

Saudi Arabia also began dispensing foreign aid to those interested in adopting Islamism, and it, too, does not care about racism or despotism. The Saudi timing was not arbitrary. More than half of African countries have healthy Islamic minorities (>10 percent) or true Islamic majorities. Many Africans have been receptive to Islamism as a solution for their divide-and-conquer racist rule. Foreign aid from western and non-western sources was again motivating racism and terrorism that was increasingly driven by Islamic militancy.

Kamala had a chance to address racism and terrorism in Africa publicly but, instead, she gave a speech to young people about innovation, and then addressed racism in the United States. Thus, she told young people in nations devastated by racism and slavery about  “the brutality of slavery and the African diaspora,” “where enslaved Africans were once loaded on ships bound for the Americas.”

In fact, very few slaves from the infamous “Castle” were transported to the United States. Almost all went to the Caribbean or Latin America. When Kamala exhorted Ghanaians to learn difficult history, she was apparently telling them to learn American history. Americans, however, don’t need any more lessons on difficult history; they’re inundated with it.

Kamala, therefore, squandered an opportunity to help Ghanaians remember their roles in the Atlantic, intra-African, and Arab slave trades. She would have been on firm ground if she’d said Africans find value in remembering the history of the white oppressors in the Atlantic trade but would find more value if they’d address their own difficult history, which implicates Africans and their Muslim brothers in behaviors that continue today.

Then again, as noted, Kamala’s probably inability to recognize that blacks can be racist will prevent her from addressing the root cause of Africa’s political and economic woes. So, once again, America will exacerbate problems in Africa.

Nana Akufo-Addo, the president of Ghana, is fully aware of Cold War II. He said to Harris:

It raises the very real possibility that once again our continent is going to become the playground for a great power conflict.

Kamala, talking about the evils of racism and terrorism, is doling out America’s cash in a playground where both evils will only grow, contributing to Africa’s economic stagnation without any benefit to America. Why is this administration repeating the errors of America’s past mistakes? And more importantly, why does the government seem determined to hand victory in Cold War II to China and Russia?

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