Resolved: It is time for America to Step up Its African Diplomacy
Resolved: It is time for America to Step up Its African Diplomacy
Putin — after the mutiny, after this international embarrassment — has never been weaker.
It is not inconceivable that another rapid rise in food prices, globally, might be on the horizon and tied directly to Putin’s antics in the Ukraine. “Ukraine is often referred to as the breadbasket of Europe, with more than 55 percent of its land being arable,” Hanna Dugal in Al Jazeera notes as to why the country is important to the continuing global fight against inflation. “Post-invasion, it was the eighth-largest producer of corn and the ninth-largest producer of wheat in the 2022-2023 period.” And not just grains; and not just to the West. “Other food commodities exported over the same period included sunflower meal (1,857,917 tonnes), sunflower oil (1,650,092 tonnes), barley (1,268,298 tonnes) and rapeseed (1,000,859 tonnes).”
Since the Black Sea Grain Initiative was brokered a year ago, almost 32.9 million metric tons of grain were exported around the world, staving off famine and weakening the double-barreled stranglehold of inflation. Grain futures, and particularly corn futures, responded by surging, dramatically this week. The UN plan, signed July 27, 2022 in Istanbul, Türkiye, ensured that Russian food and fertilizer would reach international markets, supporting the stabilization of food prices, which had been spiraling globally. It was nice while it lasted!
As if the specters of famine and inflation were not sinister enough clouds on a darkening horizon, Putin launched strikes against Odesa, one of three critical Black Sea ports that export grain and other agricultural products internationally. “Today’s decision by the Russian Federation will strike a blow to people in need everywhere,” Secretary General Guterres said at the UN Headquarters in New York on Monday in the typical understatement of a diplomat. President Zelenskii, the most social media savvy world leader, was even more forceful on Twitter, writing, “About a million tons of food is stored in the ports that were attacked today.” He continued: “This is the volume that should have been delivered to consumer countries in Africa and Asia long ago.” The blame, well all know, falls squarely on the shoulders of the Putin’s regime …
The initiative helped curb inflation and famine, but now without that guardrail, the war might start affecting us all once again, in the form of food prices. Who suffers, the question has surfaced again in the wake of this thusness, the most? Well, in the main, the African continent (surprise!). The Russian and Ukrainian shares of wheat imports to the African continent are quite remarkable. I had to read some of them a second and third time to be sure the stats were right. They are; and they speak tot he inextricable interrelatedness of the global economy, beyond the Chimerica portmanteau.
Eritrea and Benin, for example, both get 100% —! — of their wheat imports from Russia and the Ukraine. They will suffer the most, of course, but they are not alone. Sudan, Egypt, Djibuti, Tanzania, Somalia. Rwanda, the DRC, Senegal, Madagascar, Cabo Verde, Gambia, Tunisia, Uganda, Togo and Cameroon (in that order) all have at least 50% of their wheat exports from Russia and the Ukraine, and thus will be adversely affected. And soon. What will those rising food prices do for their stability? The stability of their neighbors? Does this impending instability present a greater opportunity for the Wagner Group to — cough, cough — provide military and stability “assistance”? Cough, cough.
President Zelenskii, to his credit, has stepped up his African diplomatic game. According to his Twitter account today, he spoke with Ethiopia’s Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed Ali. The blameless Ethiopians, well accustomed to the horrors of famine in the last century, will be greatly affected by the implosion of the Black Sea Grain Initiative. In fact, 33% of of Ethiopian wheat imports are from Russia and Ukraine. Zelenskii, in the middle of a most brutal land war, rose to the occasion with on the fly diplomacy. And in the moment of exigency, Zelenskii Tweeted:
I informed the interlocutor that Ukraine has supplied almost 300 thousand tons of food to Ethiopia under the Black Sea Grain Initiative and another 90 thousand tons of grain under a separate #GrainFromUkraine initiative.
I emphasized that Ukraine is still ready to remain a guarantor of global food security. It is also interested in developing bilateral relations with Ethiopia in the areas of security, digitization, and others. We talked about the need to create a platform for dialogue with African countries and discussed preparations for the Global Peace Summit.
I invited Mr. Prime Minister to visit Ukraine.
This is smashing. Of course, Putin — a right-wing ethno-nationalist and pseudo Russian Orthodox Christian — has been largely silent about the effects on his brutalism on the African continent. Putin, quite frankly, cares even less for the suffering of Africans than he does about the suffering of Ukrainians. And where is President Biden in all of this?
Here is clearly a moment for American diplomacy in Africa to go into overdrive. Such moments are rare and, as Machiavelli reminds us, fortune favors the bold. And — even better — it is the right and moral thing to do by the continent, where America has not always been a benign influence. When Russia said it wouldn’t extend the initiative to allow the safe shipment of Ukrainian grain through its ports in the Black Sea, it was a cue to call the office of the Vice President. That Kamala Harris, perhaps the most under resourced diplomatic asset in the American arsenal (and a Vice President in search of a portfolio), has not been deployed in Africa this week boggles the imagination. Bewilders the frontal lobe and perplexes. It also doesn’t hurt that the Vice President’s “Converse-on-the-ground approach,” internationally, strengthens her case in the 2024 election cycle.
The Vice President’s first trip to the Continent in March with the Second Gentleman was an all-around success. “This is why Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia — the three stops of the Vice President’s Africa tour — are getting the carrot and not the stick treatment of the 70s and the Reagan, pro-Pretoria 80s,” I wrote a few months ago. If the Vice President were to make another trip, three countries to visit as a counterbalance against recent Russian gains on the continent would be Egypt, Sudan and Rwanda, which cannot be happy about Wagner incursions in its mineral-rich neighbor the DRC. Too close for comfort, for sure. Just a humble suggestion from a newsletter writer with some skin in the Great Game. Those are also the three countries — other than Eritrea and Benin — most affected by the end of the Black Sea Grain initiative.
The ties between Russia and the African continent are historically strong. When Reagan was all the rage decades ago and our government almost entirely lacked diversity, Africa was an afterthought at best. African lives didn’t matter, beyond light rhetorical platitudes about human rights penned by angel-headed idealists in the State Department. The continent, as a whole, had little meaning beyond the natural resources that could be exploited by multinational corporations. And, of course, as minor geostrategic cudgels during the Cold War. The Russians, by contrast, were far more engaged in the African liberation movement. Russia supported the ANC and African governments against former colonial masters as well as white supremacist movements like the Boers and the hideous Rhodesian regime. African liberationists, their children and (now) their grandchildren have a long memory of “White Mischief.” Trump, in referring to African countries as “shitholes” was — and is — expressing the sentiment of a grotesque era, now passing from the political fundament.
Finally, as if to stress the point of the uniqueness of this tragic political moment, Vladimir Putin will not be attending next moth’s BRICS summit. Remember when all those talking heads were telling us, smugly, fingers a wagging, that the International Criminal Court didn’t matter? That the arrest warrant was a joke? The joke is on them. Putin’s world just got a lot smaller today as this new form of “containment” takes affect. Putin — after the mutiny, after this international embarrassment — has never been weaker.
So that is why it is time for America to step up its African Diplomacy.
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