Future of U.S.-Africa relations in question

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- As Madeleine Albright leaves on her fourth and final Africa trip as U.S. Secretary of State on Wednesday, experts are pondering whether President Bill Clinton's focus on the continent will be maintained by his successor.

With AIDS, conflict or corrupt government still rife in many African states, others ask what real gains Clinton's extra emphasis on Africa has brought and whether it will have a long-term impact.

One critic of the Clinton administration's approach said Albright, in traveling to success stories South Africa, Mauritius and Botswana from December 6 to 12, was merely sending signals which would be lost on more dictatorial leaderships.

MESSAGE BOARD U.S. Africa policy

Even Clinton's Africa Growth and Opportunity Act, which opened U.S. markets to imports, was "not going to get anywhere," said George B.N. Ayittey, associate professor at American University in Washington, who argues against dealing with undemocratic governments in his book "Africa in Chaos."

Most African commentators disagree, arguing that even if the gains are not immediately measurable, doing something is better than nothing.

Raised in Ghana, Ayittey says the administration has a romanticized view, shaped by what he sees as the unrealistic views of African Americans, far from those of native Africans.

"Albright's trip is not going to accomplish anything except perhaps reinforce what we already know about a tiny number of success stories in Africa," he said in an interview.

Following a close election four weeks ago, Albright is going to Africa at a time when Americans are unsure who will succeed Clinton in January as the next president -- Republican George W. Bush or Democrat Al Gore.

Gore, Clinton's vice president, is contesting the certification of Bush as the winner in Florida -- and hence of the presidential race.

Bush has been pressing ahead with plans to move into the White House, and discussed foreign policy on Wednesday with his likely national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice.

As Gore might be expected to pursue Africa policies similar to Clinton's, the eyes of Africa experts are on Bush, an unknown quantity.

Of a comment by Bush in February that Africa did not "fit into" U.S. strategic interests, Ayittey said: "In a perverse way, that could be good. At least it will force dictators to solve their own problems."

Comments by Bush and Rice have created an impression that he is less likely to get involved in Africa than Gore, who chaired a bilateral commission with South Africa, if he wins.

But some inside Washington's foreign policy world say this is not true, that Bush only meant in the classical sense that interests there had dwindled with the end of the Cold War.

"If you want to point to a success story under Clinton, it wasn't in Africa. It was in Washington," said an Africa expert who worked in ex-President George Bush's administration.

Agencies, bureaus and ministries now had Africa on their radar screen "and that wasn't true pre-Clinton," he added of the outgoing president, who visited sub-Saharan Africa twice.

"Issues will be forced upon the new administration -- war in Congo, anarchy in Zimbabwe, if the Ethiopia-Eritrea border war heats up again, genocide in Sierra Leone," he said.

While praising Clinton for putting the spotlight on Africa, he predicted that Bush would cooperate more with traditional and regional U.S. allies in his approach to the continent.

"The CNN effect is there, whether they like it or not, and those things will be thrust upon the desks of the new foreign policy team," he said, referring to the immediate impact of television images. "They will have to deal with it."

AIDS, a cause and an effect

Perhaps the most tangible crisis facing Africa, and certainly the deadliest, is the spread of HIV/AIDS, and this prompted the Clinton administration to reclassify it as a foreign policy priority and a threat to global security.

AIDS experts say the disease is not just a result of economic problems but also a cause of them.

And while increasing U.S. spending on it from $225 million this year to $325 million next year could only help, they say, stopping it was a more complex matter than current U.S. policy seemed to acknowledge.

"This is not like a natural disaster that you can just go in and clean up," a Nairobi-based AIDS policy consultant said.

"At these levels of infection, almost nothing makes a difference except insulating young people from their parents' generation's sexual habits, so even if prevention campaigns are successful the AIDS crisis will run and run.

"One sometimes wonders if Washington's new enthusiasm for tackling it will stay the course."

The consultant cast HIV, estimated to be spreading at its fastest in Botswana, in a brutally realistic light:

"AIDS prevention messages that ask young people to give up an orgasm today so that they can, in 10 years time, prolong their enjoyment of endemic unemployment, poverty and conflict, are unlikely to be onto a winner."

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