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As The EastAfrican went to print Friday night, the sun was setting on US President Donald Trump’s hopes of a second term in the Oval Office, as officials across the Great Lakes began to take stock of what a change. guard duty in Washington DC means for the region.
After stronger-than-expected representation on election day put President Trump in the running for re-election, a wave of ballots in the mail in key states allowed Joseph R. Biden Jr. to bring up the incumbent.
Whoever wins the White House will have an impact on the lives of East Africans and influence policies in member states of the East African Community. The first to be affected are East Africans living in the United States or wishing to travel there.
A victory for President Trump could see an extension of restrictions on asylum seekers and stricter rules on visa applications, reducing the number of East Africans joining the US diaspora or the billions of dollars they remit each year. A Biden administration would not necessarily remove all the restrictions imposed by Trump, but it is unlikely to extend or tighten them.
East African policymakers will closely monitor changes in trade, security and democracy. Earlier this year the United States and Kenya began negotiations on a free trade agreement (FTA), which are likely to continue regardless of the outcome of the White House race.
“We don’t want to lose this momentum with the FTA. It has this ability to take this relationship between Kenya and the US from what was previously dominated by Aid for Trade,” said Kyle McCarter, US Ambassador to Kenya. a media interview in Nairobi last week. “There are people who are evaluating investments of $ 16 billion under the free trade agreement. This is good for the country. I can’t predict what Biden will do.”
While Trump prefers bilateral negotiations in which the US harnesses its might to get better terms, a Biden administration may prefer a more multilateral approach, which could see trade negotiations revert to the East African Community.
Like Obama previously, the Trump administration maintained the Bush-era African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa) which allows duty-free and quota-free exports from eligible countries to the United States, but in 2018 Trump suspended Rwanda from Agoa. in a dispute over East Africa the country’s ban on importing second-hand clothes.
The suspension affected only about three percent of Rwandan exports to the United States, but signaled a tougher negotiating stance on Washington’s part that is likely to continue if somehow he gets back into office. The EAC has agreed to ban the import of second-hand clothing by 2019, although other countries have yet to follow Rwanda’s lead in implementing the decision.
Specifically, a Biden administration is expected to promote regulations on “conflict minerals” that President Trump has suspended by executive order claiming that they harm the growth of industrial and technology companies.
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The Dodd-Frank Act, signed into law by President Obama in 2010, requires all listed companies to report annually whether they are using tin, tantalum and tantalite ores from the DRC or its adjacent neighbors. The law aimed to prevent the illegal sale of minerals from the Great Lakes region, which fuel violence and exploitation.
Governments in the region will be looking for signs of changes in Washington’s foreign policy towards the region. Uganda, Ethiopia and Kenya benefited from military alliances with the US Department of Defense in exchange for supporting the fight against the extremist Shabaab group in Somalia.
Yet US policy has been erratic under Trump. He recently called for the withdrawal of US troops from Somalia, where they support the fight against Shabaab, but also pulled out an unlikely rapprochement between Sudan and Israel, removing the former from the list of state sponsors of terrorism in exchange for compensation.
With American voters tired of endless wars abroad, neither candidate would be keen to field more troops, although Biden would be less likely to arbitrarily shut down the Somalia mission as Trump threatened to do. US policy on Somalia and terrorism in the region will likely continue to be shaped by the Pentagon, rather than the State Department, and will largely maintain the status quo.
What is unclear is whether a Biden administration would be more outspoken on democracy in the region.
After four dramatic years of the Make America Great Again era, many across East Africa and elsewhere would see Trump’s departure as the end of a mistake.
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