After his wife Melania Trump who visited Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt in October 2019 for diplomatic reasons, the daughter of the American number 1, Ivanka Trump toured the African continent to promote projects for the empowerment of women. During the trip, the White House special adviser indicated that she would like to see Donald Trump himself pay a visit to Africa to, like themselves, help promote development actions on the continent.

In February 2019, President Trump, had established the Women’s Global Development and Prosperity (W-GDP) Initiative, the first whole-of-government effort to advance global women’s economic empowerment. W-GDP seeks to reach 50 million women in the developing world by 2025 through U.S. government activities, private-public partnerships, and a new, innovative fund.

US Soft Power and African Lobbying

The daughter and adviser to US President Donald Trump, Ivanka Trump, has chosen the Ivorian capital to organize the next Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative (W-GDP) summit, the women’s support initiative she is coordinating with White House.  Selected from 22 countries, the event is to be led by US diplomat Mark Andrew Green, director of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Ivanka Trump had already traveled to Abidjan in April to attend the first We-Fi Regional Summit, the Women’s Entrepreneurship Initiative organized by the World Bank in partnership with the Islamic Development Bank (IDB).  On the honeymoon with Washington, Abidjan also hosted, from August 4 to 6, the Conference of the African Growth Opportunity Act (AGOA), a law passed under Bill Clinton to facilitate US investment in Africa. Ivorian side, the subject was followed by the Minister of Planning and Development, Kaba Nialé. The AGOA Forum was prepared with the help of the American lobbying firm Avenue Strategies.

“Avenues Strategies” Advises Africans

Founded by relatives of Donald Trump, like Barry Bennett, Avenue Strategies has prepared the visit of Kaba Nialé in Washington in April. In addition to the latter, the organization of the forum was led by Khadidjata Toure, head of the economic diplomacy department at the Ivorian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Avenue Strategies had already signed in February with Felix Tshisekedi, President of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Indeed, as soon as he came to power (January 2019), Felix Tshisekedi multiplied lobbying contracts across the Atlantic. At the end of January, the new Congolese president signed up with Avenue Strategies. Barry Bennett is supposed to open to the new Congolese head of state his address book and his contacts within the Republican Party. Felix Tshisekedi, who visited Washington in April, hopes for a strategic rapprochement with the United States to secure the support of the US president. For him, the United States is “the ideal partner” to contribute to the reforms of the army and the administration, in order to then attract investors. Referring to the “potentialities” of the DRC, he also invited American economic actors to take an interest in his “strategic minerals.”

The contract with Avenue Strategies comes after the one passed, at the end of January 2019, with the lobbyist Stephen Lande, boss of Manchester Trade. Engaged with several governments (Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, South Africa …), he advises the presidency of Congo-Kinshasa on economic cooperation with the United States, particularly in the mining sector. A sector in which Manchester Trade has already operated with governments and private groups (Delta Mining, Mining Indaba conference …). During his campaign, Tshisekedi was engaged with the firm Pamoja USA, in charge of organizing fundraisers across the Atlantic.

Not African Security but Chinese Progress on the Continent

While Ivory Coast’s Minister of Defense Hamed Bakayoko was the guest of honor at the first China-Africa Peace and Security Forum (Beijing, July 15) and President Alassane Ouattara tripped to Moscow at the invitation of Vladimir Putin, the Trump administration made a comeback in Abidjan. To avoid losing its positions in Ivory Coast, the White House used its usual levers of influence in Africa: bilateral military cooperation and investment credits.

Oddly enough, it is not the African security that seems to cause worries in Washington, but rather, the progress of China and Russia in Africa. Witness to this behavior, the New York Times run two stories in March 2019.

… While US Troops Flee

On March 1, it observed that on the orders of President Trump, “hundreds of United States commandos and other forces are leaving West Africa — despite an onslaught of attacks from an increasingly deadly matrix of Islamist fighters. The shift has unnerved African commanders in Burkina Faso and neighboring nations in the Sahel, a vast sub-Saharan scrubland increasingly racked by bombings, massacres, kidnappings and attacks on hotels frequented by Westerners.”  In 2017 though, four US soldiers were killed in a deadly ambush in Niger by Islamic State fighters.

A few weeks later, the same newspaper observed that “In West Africa, the American military is scaling back its commandos by about 25 percent as part of a larger Pentagon strategy to confront threats by Russia, China and other state powers. The shift comes as insurgents are attacking northern Burkina Faso and pushing south along the border with Niger toward areas previously untouched by extremist violence, including the Ivory Coast, Benin, Togo and Ghana, where the Pentagon has a logistics hub.”

Pay to be Protected

This development – withdrawing when most needed – is a reminder of a similar scenario in the Middle East, where soon Trump pointed that the Gulf countries need to pay for the US protection. It was a precedent.

Come Back to West Africa

Yet, after withdrawing troops, there was a comeback! Is it a new pattern of power politics? That’s what it seems to be. Under Trump, Washington will try to bargain its relationship to some countries and regions. Its willful retirement is not a return to the old isolationist stance, though. It is not based on a doctrine or a worldview. It sounds like a game or rather a way to show its “value” and the need (of other countries) for its help. A help that is now marketable, not freely offered, if ever it were.

Air Base in Ivory Coast

Observers noted that while the US Navy led an accelerated training plan for the Ivorian navy aboard the Carson City high-speed catamaran off Abidjan, other more substantial military programs were being negotiated at the Ivorian presidency.

Still better: The US military command in Africa (Africom) may establish in Ivory Coast an air base capable of hosting surveillance drones and also armed drones. The Africom was to inaugurate, with three years behind schedule, its main West African air base in Agadez and wished to shine in the sub-region, as the jihadist threat moves south.

Coincidence or pure calculation?

“Coincidentally,” the new US ambassador to Ivory Coast is a specialist in security issues. Richard K. Bell was for three years the “foreign affairs” advisor of Africom. Previously, he led the reconstruction in the Iraqi province of Salahuddin after the US intervention in 2003. Richard K. Bell is the first American ambassador since 2013. For six years, the United States Embassy in Abidjan was managed only by a charge d’affaires.

The Reason: Countering China and Russia

What made Donald Trump change course?

Firstly, Lobbying. As we said, US help is now marketable. In Washington, Paris and London, this is a very lucrative business. It works as a lubricant easing complicated situations. So, it is not unlikely that Barry Bennet’s Avenue Strategies and Stephen Lande’s Manchester Trade, and other lobbyists as well, did a “good job,” for the benefit of the Trump administration.

The Trump strategy worked in the Middle East. There is no reason that it will not work in other regions as well.

Result: As president Trump changed his mind about Qatar in 2017, passing from “a sponsor of terrorism” to a “friendly peaceful state,” he did about the same thing in West Africa.

Secondly, China and Russia. In Washington’s view, neither of them should be “allowed” to take more importance in the Middle East, Asia-Pacific, or Africa, so to threaten the US supremacy. Particularly China, with its Belt & Road initiative. Is it going to make the famous Marshall Plan look like a dinosaur and the USA an ex-superpower? That is not exactly the kind of “help” Trump needed for his “making America great again”! Hence the trade war. But it is just one piece in a global strategy for a struggle that is expected to be as complicated as ineluctable.

Another piece of the strategy is used with small and medium states.  Through a well-pondered step-by-step tactics of deceptive withdrawal from hot regions, coercion, menace, high-pressure, and intimidation, Washington actually tries to gain more leverage to come back to control, as a “benevolent” power, pushing aside – when possible – China or Russia. The “benevolent power”- which relies on a sophisticated combination of hard and soft power- is the doctrine of the neocons who helped George W. Bush invade Afghanistan and Iraq, change their regime, pretend democratization, and with hindsight, obviously create a worse situation. Donald Trump’s ex-National Security adviser, John Bolton, was one of their leaders and their hub still is, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI)- a right-wing neoconservative think tank.

Back to Business in Ivory Coast under the “Benevolent Power”

If China conquered the African minds by its “win-win” cooperation motto, the USA would not stay in the rear, on the ideological level. Notwithstanding Trump’s insults to the Africans, the “benevolent power” relies on the short memory of people. There is always hope!

On August 5, 2019, after three years of close negotiations, Ivory Coast received a substantial donation from the Millennium Challenge Corp (MCC). This development agency set up -unsurprisingly – under George W. Bush, has the “distinction” of entrusting the management of its contributions to the beneficiary countries themselves. Here we see the “benevolent power” at work! As such, Ivory Coast reportedly inherited an envelope of $ 524.7 million which was to be managed locally by an organization created for the occasion. Negotiations were conducted by Alassane Ouattara’s secretary general and confidant, Patrick Achi.

Ivory Coast’s entry into the MCC was validated in November 2017 following talks led by the former deputy general secretary of the presidency, Thierry Tanoh, himself a member of the International Finance Corporation, a subsidiary of the World Bank. In the presidency, Tanoh has for a long time managed the relationship with the United States and the international financial institutions from which he came, before leaving the government in December 2018. He joined his mentor, Henri Konan Bédié, and the Democratic Party of Côte of Ivory Coast (PDCI).

The lobbying powers

To be elected by the MCC, the Ivorian presidency also mobilized its irremovable American lobbyist Jefferson Waterman.  Already in 2017, the Jefferson Waterman International (JWI), founded by the two former CIAs, Charles Waterman and Samuel Wyman, has been hired by the Ivorian presidency to reform the appointment of defense attachés in the Chancelleries.

Here, we find Tony Blair in direct competition with former US ambassadors in Abidjan, Philip Carter III and Lennon Walker. These associates of Jefferson Waterman International (JWI) are frequent visitors to the Presidential Palace for Security Contracts. Another diplomat formerly posted in Abidjan before going back to private sector with his Eurafrique Stratégie cabinet, is the French Jean-Marc Simon, an unofficial adviser to the president. There is also Mamadi Diané, who, despite his ouster, in 2016, from the presidency where he officiated as diplomatic advisor, remained close to Alassane Ouattara. Founder of the firm Amex in Washington, he has offices in the Saint-Augustin building in the plateau area of the Ivorian economic capital. He still manages many cases related to Nigerian interests in the country. As for David Mimran, founder of the Miminvest company and friend of the presidential couple, he has been entrusted with several issues related to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank.

Paid $ 1.4 million in 2018 alone ($ 482,000 on September 28 and $ 985,000 on July 7), Jefferson Waterman International was initially Alassane Ouattara’s personal lobbyist with the White House. When he was inducted into President in 2011, Jefferson Waterman became the country’s official relay in the United States. The firm, which employs no less than two former ambassadors in Abidjan – Lannon Walker and Philip Carter III – is also the lobbyist for Ghana, with whom Ivory Coast is trying to set up a cocoa cartel. Jefferson Waterman also intervenes on behalf of the Union of Democratic Forces of Guinea, the party of Cellou Dalein Diallo who has the discreet favors of the Ouattara administration, which a deaf rivalry opposes to the Guinean President Alpha Condé.

France: Game Leader and “Horn in the Foot”

Ostensibly, France’s President Emmanuel Macron is not much impressed or fooled by Trump’s tactics of deceptive withdrawal, coercion, menace, high-pressure, and intimidation. Nor did the French ever trusted the American “benevolence.” In Africa precisely, the French have long been considered by the Americans as a “thorn in the foot.” With the eclipse of the former Soviet influence, a deaf struggle took place between the two “allies.” Thus, while leading its own business in Africa, Paris does not intend to be a simple witness to the struggle between the USA and China on that continent.

French President Emmanuel Macron has invited no fewer than five African presidents to attend the G7 summit held from 24 to 26 August in Biarritz: Alongside the leaders of the G7 countries, the Egyptian head of state Abdel Fattah al-Sissi,  there was the current president of the African Union (AU), as well as his predecessor at the head of the AU, the Rwandan Paul Kagame. The current president of the alliance of the G5 Sahel countries, Burkina Faso’s head of state, Roch Marc Christian Kaboré, and his Senegalese counterpart Macky Sall. Also, the South African head of state Cyril Ramaphosa, on a first official visit to France since his election as president of South Africa.

Paris, which has placed its presidency of the G7 under the banner of the fight against inequality, wished in particular to push more G7 states to engage in the Sahel. In preparation for the summit, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian met in Paris on July 4 and 5, with his counterparts from Germany, the United States, Canada, Italy, the United Kingdom and Japan, as well as all ministers of foreign affairs of the five G5 Sahel countries (Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger). In this context, Japan joined the Sahel Alliance, as an observer, and Canada was also invited. The grouping is supposed to centralize all development projects in the region.

This article is originally published by the Gulf Futures Centre and can be accessed here