The Foreign Service Journal, September 2008

dential election approaches. Despite growing anti-American sentiment in many parts of the world, the United States is largely popular among Africans, many of whom continue sending their children for education and jobs in America. For the majori- ty of the continent’s 800 million inhab- itants, who live on less than a dollar a day, America is still the land of oppor- tunity, whose government and people — philanthropists and taxpayers alike — have helped put food on many tables in the face of rising poverty, disease and civil wars. America is also helping to heal the wounds of recover- ing nations, like Kenya, which suffered massive post-elec- tion violence earlier this year. The country’s prime min- ister, Raila Odinga, recently collected a grant for infra- structure repair while visiting the U.S. to brief top offi- cials on the performance of the country’s coalition gov- ernment. This dependence on America for foreign aid and cash wired in by the continent’s emigrants has meant that elec- tions in America are, to a large extent, regarded as an African affair. Africans want the leading superpower to take the continent’s interests to heart, and to ask other donor countries to help as well. Because of Barack Obama’s background, he is consid- ered an African son, drawing even more local attention to the U.S. campaign than in previous years. Many on the continent, which has received massive attention from the Bush administration, feel they would benefit even more if Obama makes history in November. They are so enthusiastic that east and central Africa’s largest circulat- ing daily newspaper, the Daily Nation , published a 12- page special report when Obama won the nomination — far more space than many U.S. newspapers allotted. Yet what Africans want most is for Americans to elect a president who has the interests of humanity at heart, regardless of his or her color. As Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade told the UNITY Conference of Journalists of Color in a July speech, “I don’t believe Obama will be at the service of Africa. ... I’m not making any postulates. He has to prove it.” A Credible Record There is also strong support for John McCain’s candidacy among Africans, who hope that he will build on the current president’s accomplish- ments. Overall, the Bush administra- tion has spent huge amounts of money on poverty, education and health pro- grams in Africa, and the president vis- ited the continent in January to assess some of the projects it has been spon- soring. In Tanzania, the U.S. has spent $698 million fighting malaria, a disease that kills more than a million people each year in sub-Saharan Africa, most of them less than 5 years old. The American program aims to get medicine, insecticide and mosquito-stopping bed nets to millions of people, both in Africa and other parts of the developing world. Washington has also devoted $30 billion to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, an initiative aimed at saving lives and helping the African continent avert a health disaster that has already claimed 17 million victims. Currently, about 28 million Africans are HIV- positive and 12 million children have lost their parents to AIDS. Finally, Bush’s leadership has secured $17 million to equip 7,000 Rwandan troops, who are being sent to the Darfur region of western Sudan to handle the ethnic and tribal violence that has raged there for years, leaving about 200,000 dead and more than two million people dis- placed. Arab militias, said to be backed by the Sudanese government, have wantonly attacked Africans, and numerous rebel groups have attacked government tar- gets. (On July 14, Luis Moreno-Ocampo, chief prosecu- tor for the International Criminal Court, indicted Sudanese President Omar Al Bashir for genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, bringing renewed international attention to the conflict.) Sudan is one of the African countries that appear most comfortable with the Bush administration, to the extent that many of its people would prefer to see Republican John McCain elected to continue current U.S. policies. They argue that George Bush has done much more to tackle the Darfur crisis than did Bill Clinton. And they fear that a return of Democrats to the White House might mean America will turn a blind eye to the continent’s crises once again. F O C U S 18 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 8 Samuel Siringi is a bureau chief for Nairobi’s Daily Nation newspaper. Despite growing anti- American sentiments in many parts of the world, the United States remains popular among Africans.