WASHINGTON: Will President George W. Bush’s first trip to Africa as president amount more to spin than to substance?

That’s what most Africa specialists are waiting to find out, and the betting so far, despite his administration’s leaning toward sending US peacekeeping troops to Liberia, is heavily weighted toward spin.

“Is this for real or is this tourism?” asked Chester Crocker, former President Ronald Reagan’s top Africa aide, during a forum on the president’s five-day swing around the continent earlier this week. “This is an important part of the world.”

Many African activists have largely discounted the trip already, although they say they would be very pleased if proven wrong.

“This is a cynical trip, a good photo-op”, said Bill Fletcher, director of the TransAfrica Forum, a think tank, who said he was especially “uneasy” about the political symbolism of some stops, such as Bush’s planned visit to Senegal’s Goree Island, the fortress where African slaves were kept before being shipped across the Atlantic.

The whirlwind trip, which will take Bush to Senegal, Botswana, South Africa, Uganda, and Nigeria, is seen as an opportunity to demonstrate Washington’s concern about more than Eurasian hotspots and to take credit for a series of initiatives, including possible major increases in US aid for Africa, promoted by his administration.

Bush will tout, in particular, his proposed five-year, $15 billion emergency anti-AIDS programme and his “Millennium Challenge Account” (MCA) which could double the roughly one billion dollars in annual bilateral aid the US currently provides African countries.

He is also expected to promote ongoing negotiations for a free-trade accord between the Southern African Customs Union and the US and extension of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a Clinton-era programme to boost US trade and investment in Africa.

Before leaving, Bush is also expected to commit the US to participate — possibly with as many as 2,000 US troops despite Pentagon resistance — in a multilateral peacekeeping force for Liberia. If he decides to actually put US “boots on the ground” as part of such a force, it would break a 10-year-old taboo.

The last time US troops were deployed as peace-keepers in Africa was in Mogadishu in October 1993, when 18 US soldiers and hundreds of Somalis were killed in an incident made famous by the movie, “Blackhawk Down”.

“A Liberian operation would be more than symbolic, because it would create a new precedent for US peacekeeping on the African continent,” said one administration official. Given the scheduling of his trip and mounting international pressure to send troops, “doing less would be seen as almost unbelievably callous”.

Activists in general also support a US role on the ground, provided that it is part of a multilateral force and carried out in full co-operation with the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Union (AU).

Each stop in Bush’s itinerary is supposed to highlight some aspect of the administration’s interest in Africa. Senegal is seen, for example, as a democratic model that has done well with AGOA, while South Africa and Nigeria are the continent’s “economic powerhouses”, according to Assistant Secretary of State for Africa, Walter Kansteiner, who has long stressed the growing importance of oil and gas from the Gulf of Guinea region in US energy supplies.

“Uganda is an important player on the war against terrorism, ...(and) we have lot to learn from President (Yoweri) Museveni on HIV/AIDS,” Kansteiner said.

But even Bush’s visit has drawn criticism, especially from Africa activists who point out, for example, that Museveni’s support for rebel groups in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), as well as his resistance to political liberalization, makes hi him a poor choice to honour with a presidential visit. This is in contrast to neighbouring Kenya, whose new, democratically elected government needs all the help it can get to recover from a disastrous drop in tourism receipts that followed last November’s terrorist attacks in Mombasa. Bush will instead announce $100 million in anti-terrorist aid for the region.

Activists also have been scratching their heads over why Bush — unlike every other foreign leader who has visited South Africa over the past five years — did not request a meeting with former President Nelson Mandela.

“There was no discussion about a meeting with President Mandela, either from them or from us,” explained a knowledgeable senior administration official Wednesday, contradicting Kansteiner’s assertion earlier in the week that “Mandela was not going to be in town”.

“Mandela’s decision to absent himself (from South Africa when Bush was coming) is testimony to his magnanimous nature against the pettiness of the White House, which can’t bear to have President Bush engage someone of stature who disagrees with him,” said Salih Booker, director of Africa Action, who enjoys close ties to the South African leadership. Mandela had strongly assailed Bush for going to war in Iraq.

Activists and regional specialists alike also expressed some exasperation with Bush’s decision not to address the summit of the new African Union (AU) in Maputo, Mozambique, during his trip. The summit, which runs July 4-12 and will be attended by at least 40 African heads of state, overlaps Bush’s trip. As a result, his tour will actually prevent the leaders of his host countries from attending the regional meeting.

“Logistically, it would have been very difficult for us to have gone to Mozambique,” said the senior administration official, noting that Bush travels with such a large entourage that it might “overwhelm the capacity of (Mozambique) to deal with (it)”.

Activists will still consider the trip an advance if Bush stakes out strong positions on a number of issues.

In particular, they are hoping that Bush will make clear his he expects Congress to fully fund the $15 billion anti-AIDS package. Although authorised, the monies for the programme have yet to be appropriated. To the extent that Bush claims credit for the still-unfunded AIDS package and the MCA, says Booker, lack of action would amount to a “cruel hoax”.

“He has the power to do this; the question is does he have the will”, said Booker, who added that if Bush also called for a moratorium on the payment of Africa’s huge foreign debt to help deal with the AIDS crisis, he would be making a major contribution without sacrificing key constituencies.

Njoki Njoroge Njehu, director of ‘50 Years is Enough’, said Bush would also get considerable credit if during his trip he came out clearly in favour of dropping structural-adjustment-type conditions on debt cancellation programmes overseen by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). “This would bring real gains and benefits to African women and children,” she said noting that Africa currently spends substantially more on debt servicing than on health and education combined.

Similarly, TransAfrica’s Fletcher said he would be impressed “if Bush says he will end all agricultural subsidies”, a step that is consistent with his free-trade views and that would greatly help African farmers compete on the global market, particularly if European agricultural producers followed suit.—Dawn/The InterPress News Service.