Four ex-assistant secretaries of state for African Affairs, whose combined service spanned seven decades and 12 presidents, gathered together on 27 June for the first-ever Carnegie Africa Forum, in Washington DC. The Africa Report moderated the discussion.

While highlighting the successes of their respective time in office and applauding US humanitarian and diplomatic engagement, the retired diplomats acknowledged that America must rethink its approach to compete with China on the economic front.

“We absolutely do not have the right tools,” said Tibor Nagy, who served under President Donald Trump.

Ribbons versus red tape

Nagy said the Chinese were “just starting to come back in” when he left his ambassadorial posting to Ethiopia in 2002.

Describing touring the continent as assistant secretary of state a decade and a half later, he said: “Every place I go, it’s all about China.”

“I’ll never forget visiting Kampala and high-ranking Uganda ministers saying: ‘Mr. Assistant Secretary, we have the perfect arrangement – the Chinese take care of our infrastructure, and you Americans take care of our health sector.’”

Nagy was frustrated, though not surprised, at seeing US taxpayers foot the bill for development assistance while the Chinese reaped the rewards of a thriving commercial relationship.

“For a long time, when there was a knock on the door, it was only the Chinese contractor who was there,” Nagy said. “The Chinese can do it so much smoother than we can, because they come in, and it’s a bundle. It’s all tied up with a little ribbon. They already have the project, they have the contractor picked up, and they have the financing picked out.”

Heavy-handed effort to abandon Huawei

Nagy was particularly critical of the Trump administration’s heavy-handed efforts to get Africans to abandon Huawei, without offering them any viable telecommunications in response.

“So we’re supposed to go and tell the countries not to buy Huawei,” he said  “So they say: ‘Okay, what do you want us to buy?’ So we came up with some hodgepodge of different manufacturers that weren’t the same level of quality, and it cost a lot more money. So if you’re a rational consumer, what are you going to buy?”

Herman ‘Hank’ Cohen, who served under President George H.W. Bush, expressed admiration for the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative that US officials often denounce – largely inaccurately – as a “debt trap”.

“What the Chinese are doing on their Belt and Road Initiative is very good,” he said. “They’re doing all sorts of great things – roads, dams.”

He drew attention, however, to negative effects, including Chinese workers staying on and importing cheap Chinese goods.

“The Chinese in Africa are a double-edged sword,” Cohen said. “On the one hand, they’re doing great work on infrastructure. And on the other hand, they are undermining Africa’s business environment.”

We have an awful lot of very small embassies in Africa. Most of the places we had one person, maybe a couple at larger embassies, a few more

Jendayi Frazer, who served under President George W. Bush, said the US was “undermining” itself by tying its economic policy in Africa to unrelated considerations. She pointed to the decision to suspend Uganda from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) over anti-gay legislation and other human rights issues as an example of the US shooting itself in the foot.

“We have increasingly used [AGOA] as a stick,” she said. “And so we’re kicking countries out about issues that have nothing to do with trade and development, which is what that is about.”

She denounced a “lack of seriousness” when dealing with Africa in particular.

“We don’t treat Saudi Arabia this way,” she said. “So somehow our interests and our values can be managed in countries where we see strategic importance, but yet when we go to Africa, we’re wagging our fingers. I think it’s a problem for developing serious bilateral relationships.”

Frazer was particularly critical of members of Congress who wanted to rewrite US trade policy to force Africans to choose between China and the US.

“Even more ridiculous is the new approach that can’t be considered serious, where Congress is saying if you deal with China, and you trade with China and have a relationship with China, we’re going to kick you out of AGOA,” she said. “How does that make sense, with the story that was just told about how far China is ahead of us in terms of … economic relations, its development with Africa? And then the one major initiative that we have in this area … we’re saying to them, we’re going to kick you out, but we do more trade with China than any of them do. It makes no sense.”

Unfair fight

Nagy said the other issue is the lack of diplomatic and commercial resources.

“We have an awful lot of very small embassies in Africa. Most of the places we had one person, maybe a couple at larger embassies, a few more,” he said. “Some places, we had half of a person who was doing visas in the morning, and you know, promoting trade and investment in the afternoon. So it was nowhere a fair fight.”

Johnnie Carson, who served under President Barack Obama and briefly returned from retirement to implement the promises from President Joe Biden’s US-Africa Leaders Summit, said the US must “work harder” to make itself the partner of choice on the continent.

But he said Africans also have to make sure they’re holding all their partners to the same standards, rather than choosing the cheapest options or the ones with the fewest strings attached. Otherwise, they risk repeating the experience of Kenya.

“Kenya is facing in part an economic crisis. And part of that crisis is due to choices,” Carson said. “Choices that Kenya has made in building a new railroad from Mombasa to Nairobi – $4.7bn. Choices on a new international airport. Choices on a new set of motorways running through the country, all bought from China.

“African countries do have agency, African countries can make the kinds of decisions that they want,” he added. “But we also have to say choose your partners and what they’re offering wisely, because sometimes, maybe what you buy is caveat emptor.”