Just five days to his inauguration President-elect Donald J. Trump has
\nquestioned why the United State was still spending money to fight the Boko
\nHaram insurgency in Nigeria, why all of the schoolgirls kidnapped by the
\ngroup have not been rescued and whether Qaeda operatives from Africa are
\nliving in the United States. He went further questioned the effectiveness
\nof one of the more significant counterterrorism efforts on the continent.<\/p>\n
According to New York Times Trump in four-page write up raised
\nAfrica-related questions.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow does U.S. business compete with other nations in Africa? Are we
\nlosing out to the Chinese?\u201d asks one of the first questions in the
\nunclassified document provided to The New York Times. That is quickly
\nfollowed with queries about humanitarian assistance money.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith so much corruption in Africa, how much of our funding is stolen? Why
\nshould we spend these funds on Africa when we are suffering here in the
\nU.S.?<\/p>\n
Some of the questions are those that should be asked by a new
\nadministration seeking to come to grips with the hows and whys behind
\nlongstanding American national security and foreign assistance policies.<\/p>\n
But it is difficult to know whether the probing, critical tone of other
\nquestions indicates that significant policy changes should be expected.<\/p>\n
On terrorism, the document asks why the United States is even bothering to
\nfight the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, why all of the schoolgirls
\nkidnapped by the group have not been rescued and whether Qaeda operatives
\nfrom Africa are living in the United States. And it questions the
\neffectiveness of one of the more significant counterterrorism efforts on
\nthe continent.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been fighting al-Shabaab for a decade, why haven\u2019t we won?\u201d poses
\none question, referring to the terrorist group based in Somalia that was
\nbehind the Westgate mall attacks in Kenya in 2013.<\/p>\n
Although the document represents a first look at how the new
\nadministration might approach policy toward Africa, a subject that was
\nrarely touched on during the campaign, officials with the Trump transition
\nteam did not respond to queries about the list.<\/p>\n
\u201cMany of the questions that they are asking are the right questions that
\nany incoming administration should ask,\u201d said Monde Muyangwa, the director
\nof the Africa program at the Woodrow Wilson Institute.<\/p>\n
But she also noted that \u201cthe framing of some of their questions suggests a
\nnarrower definition of U.S. interests in Africa, and a more transactional
\nand short-term approach to policy and engagement with African countries.\u201d
\nMs. Muyangwa said the queries could signal \u201ca dramatic turn in how the
\nUnited States will engage with the continent.\u201d<\/p>\n
J. Peter Pham, who has been mentioned for the job of assistant secretary
\nof state for African affairs in a Trump administration, said he does not
\nexpect Mr. Trump to do a complete U-turn in relations with Africa.<\/p>\n
Mr. Pham, director of the Africa program at the Atlantic Council, said he
\nexpects Mr. Trump will emphasize fighting extremism on the continent,
\nwhile also looking to enhance opportunities for American businesses. In
\nother questions, the Trump transition team challenges the benefits of a
\ntrade pact known as the African Growth and Opportunity Act.<\/p>\n
\u201cMost of AGOA imports are petroleum products, with the benefits going to
\nnational oil companies, why do we support that massive benefit to corrupt
\nregimes?\u201d the questionnaire asks. Yet Mr. Pham said he expected a Trump
\nadministration would support the pact.<\/p>\n
\u201cAGOA has created more than 120,000 jobs in the United States,\u201d Mr. Pham
\nsaid in an interview. A big unknown, though, is how a Trump administration
\nwill handle foreign assistance to the continent and its 54 nations.<\/p>\n
President George W. Bush quadrupled foreign assistance levels to African
\ncountries, and President Obama largely maintained that, even as his
\nadministration was making cuts elsewhere.<\/p>\n
Even so, the amount of American aid in 2015 to other critical allies \u2014
\nAfghanistan ($5.5 billion), Israel ($3.1 billion), Iraq ($1.8 billion) and
\nEgypt ($1.4 billion) \u2014 far exceeded the approximately $8 billion for all
\nof sub-Saharan Africa.<\/p>\n
The questions seem to reflect the inaccurate view shared by many Americans
\nabout how much the United States spends on foreign aid and global health
\nprograms. Polls show that Americans believe the country spends 25 percent
\nof its budget on foreign aid \u2014 but the truth is that foreign aid is just 1
\npercent of the federal budget.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been hunting Kony for years, is it worth the effort?\u201d poses another
\nseries of questions related to Joseph Kony, the warlord head of Uganda\u2019s
\nviolent guerrilla group the Lord\u2019s Resistance Army, who has eluded the
\nauthorities for three decades. \u201cThe LRA has never attacked U.S. interests,
\nwhy do we care?<\/p>\n
Is it worth the huge cash outlays? I hear that even the Ugandans are
\nlooking to stop searching for him, since they no longer view him as a
\nthreat, so why do we?\u201d The hunt for Mr. Kony and his fighters has
\ngenerated a huge amount of publicity around the world, in large part
\nbecause of a video on his elusiveness and brutality, \u201cKony 2012,\u201d that has
\nbeen viewed more than 100 million times on YouTube.<\/p>\n
But other questions, foreign policy experts say, return to a theme of a
\ncontinent that has squandered American money and effort. The questions
\nchallenge, for instance, a hallmark of Mr. Bush\u2019s Africa policy \u2014 the
\nPepfar program, which has provided billions to fight AIDS and tuberculosis
\nin Africa.<\/p>\n
Rex W. Tillerson, Mr. Trump\u2019s nominee for secretary of state, complimented
\nthe program, calling Pepfar \u201cone of the most extraordinarily successful
\nprograms in Africa\u201d during his Senate nomination hearing. But, in
\ncontrast, the Trump transition questionnaire asks, \u201cIs PEPFAR worth the
\nmassive investment when there are so many security concerns in Africa? Is
\nPEPFAR becoming a massive, international entitlement program?\u201d<\/p>\n
J. Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at the
\nCenter for Strategic and International Studies, said the questions showed
\nan \u201coverwhelmingly negative and disparaging outlook\u201d on the continent.<\/p>\n
\u201cA strange attitude runs through this,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s a sort of
\nrecurrent skepticism that Africa matters to U.S. interests at all. It\u2019s
\nentirely negative in orientation.\u201d<\/p>\n
But the questions do appear to accurately reflect what Mr. Trump has said
\npublicly about Africa in the few times that he has mentioned the
\ncontinent. For instance, during the Ebola crisis in 2014, Mr. Trump took
\nto Twitter to argue that Americans infected with Ebola should not be
\nallowed back into the United States. As two American health workers became
\ncritically ill and were airlifted to Atlanta for treatment, Mr. Trump had
\nthis to say via Twitter: \u201cStop the EBOLA patients from entering the U.S.
\nTreat them, at the highest level, over there. THE UNITED STATES HAS ENOUGH
\nPROBLEMS!\u201d<\/p>\n
The Ebola epidemic, which killed almost 10,000 people in Guinea, Sierra
\nLeone and Liberia (but no Americans), comes up once in the document.<\/p>\n
\u201cHow,\u201d the questionnaire asks, \u201cdo we prevent the next Ebola outbreak from
\nhitting the U.S.?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just five days to his inauguration President-elect Donald J. Trump has questioned why the United State was still spending money to fight the Boko Haram insurgency in Nigeria, why all…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":54362,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55508","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-exclusive"],"yoast_head":"\n