US Policy toward Africa in the 1990s: Challenges, Changes, and Constraints

Abstract

Namibia is on the path to a peaceful independence settlement sponsored by the Reagan Administration at the end of 1988, but the African continent as a whole remains mired by other political, economic, and military problems that will confront US policymakers in the next decade. These problems, which thus far have resisted solution by Africans and their external supporters, comprise the African countries’ foreign debt crisis, agricultural decline and famine, militarization and wars. Such problems, in fact, are eclipsing apartheid as the continent’s main source of trouble; human rights abuses, which once allowed the finger to point straight at South Africa, are fast becoming the shame of certain independent Black nations. Even as the African problems spiral upwards, there is a growing perception among American policymakers and analysts alike that Africa is likely to wane as an area of future US policy priorities and, correspondingly, that responsibility for solving Africa’s problems should fall upon the Africans themselves.