A scholar’s new work, Treachery and Diplomacy: The Shadow Politics of US-Africa Relations, challenges the assumption that the United States has consistently dominated its engagements with the continent. Author Sobukwe Odinga, an assistant professor in UCLA’s Department of African American Studies, scrutinizes security trends between Washington and four nations: Ethiopia, Liberia, DR Congo, and Uganda. The study argues that African leaders have often handled—rather than submitted to—US influence, exploiting partnerships to advance their own agendas.
Odinga’s book takes a close look at the Cold War era, particularly the contentious relationship between Washington and Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo), which was then under the rule of President Mobutu Sese Seko. Despite Mobutu’s autocratic and kleptocratic tendencies, the US maintained a working relationship with him due to the strategic importance of the Kamina air base and the Shinkolobwe uranium mine.
The Strategic Importance of Shinkolobwe
The Shinkolobwe mine was essential to the US, as it was the origin of the uranium used in the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The US had maintained intense surveillance over the mine during World War II, fearing that Nazi Germany would acquire the uranium to build its own atomic bomb. This fear later shifted to the Soviet Union during the Cold War.
As a result, the US deemed it essential to maintain a working relationship with Mobutu, despite his abusive and misrule, which had devastating effects on the Congolese people. However, not everyone in the US was willing to turn a blind eye to Mobutu’s excesses. The Congressional Black Caucus, founded in 1971, played a significant role in pressuring the Reagan administration to cut US aid to Mobutu.
John Conyers, a founding member and long-serving leader of the CBC, deemed the relationship between Mobutu and Reagan an affront to human rights and “a direct insult to black Americans”. Odinga’s book highlights the complex and often contradictory nature of US-Africa relations, influenced by questions of race and the pursuit of individual interests.
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African Leaders’ Agency and Guile
Odinga argues that African leaders have been able to leverage US policy to assert their own goals and agendas. He cites the examples of Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni and Ethiopia’s late Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, who both emerged after the overthrow of destabilizing predecessor regimes and were rewarded with US support despite their own autocratic tendencies.
These leaders have been able to “publicly assert their autonomy from the West while maintaining intimate and profitable security partnerships with the West”, a win-win for elites. Odinga’s book shows that the US-Africa relationship has not been one of uniform domination, but rather a complex web of bargaining processes and shifting currents of racial difference and solidarity.
The relationship has evolved over time, with the US seeking regional partners in its global war against Islamic militancy and terrorism after 9/11. By 2007, Uganda was intervening in Somalia with the full backing of the United States, in a bid to “neutralise” insurgents. This dynamic would intensify after the declaration of the US War on Terror in 2001, with leaders like Museveni compelling successive US administrations to back their often militaristic agenda.
In 1998, President Bill Clinton led a delegation to East Africa to promote the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which gives duty-free access to the US market for thousands of products from eligible sub-Saharan African countries.
The book Treachery and diplomacy: the shadow politics of US-Africa relations is published by Columbia University Press and is available for $35. The ISBN is 9780231202695. Odinga’s book highlights the complex US-Africa relationship, with both parties having their own interests and agendas.
