Obama: What Legacies For America And Africa

After spending eight years in the White House as America’s 44th President, Barack Obama will hand over January 20 to Mr. Donald Trump to end his two – term presidency.

As Americans and indeed the international community look forward to a new era, it is also a period for stock taking of what Obama made of the opportunity he had to preside over the affairs of the most powerful country in the world. There is already a raging debate about what has come to be referred to as the “Obama Legacy”.

Expectedly, there is a sharp division of views about Obama’s performance and his legacies as president. For the Republicans, he was simply a disaster and the most terrible thing that ever happened to the US.

In actual fact however, Obama surely had his high points and of course his lows as well.

One of his most talked-about achievements has been “the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act”. The 906-page health care reform law known as “Obamacare,” was signed into law on March 23, 2010. This law has opened the window for health care provision for the poor and vulnerable groups across the country. Over 20million people are already on this plan.

Ironically, it has remained the most criticized Obama policy by the Republicans who have vowed to repeal the Act as soon as Trump takes over as president. It remains to be seen what will become the fate of the over 20 million participants already covered in the programme.

In the execution of foreign policy, the elimination of Osama Bin Laden the leader of Alqaeda and mastermind of the September 11 2001 attack on the US remains one of the highest points of the Obama’s foreign policy. His successful negotiation with Iran to end the country’s nuclear programme was celebrated by his administration for achieving the feat with non-violent approach. The incoming president, Trump has however, indicated he would revisit the Iran Nuclear deal. How he does that would become clear when he takes over the White House.

Obama’s policy in Syria unfortunately saw the US playing not a very prominent role in the prolonged and bloody crisis thereby throwing up Russia as the leading actor in the fight against the rebels as President Putin sought to keep his Syrian ally, Bashar Al Assad, in power by all means.

Obama’s management of the economy has generally been applauded. He took over the administration of the country in the face of a full blast recession in 2008, the worst since 1930, when the monthly “non-farm pay rolls” report for the first month of his presidency showed 800,000 job losses in one month! Obama settled down quickly to reverse the trend.

A couple of policies including bailout funds to major auto manufacturers created at least 2million new jobs in the auto industry alone in the first two years of his presidency.

His intervention policies in the mortgage, transportation and other sectors led to overall recovery returning the American economy on the path of growth and prosperity. Obama has taunted the Republicans with his job creation records which he proudly counts as one of his major legacies to the American society.

Obama’s achievements in the economy were nearly obliterated by his stand on the issue of same sex relationships which became legalized under his presidency. The issue of gay marriage, lesbians and transgender has been on for decades and all successive presidents avoided it like a plague until Obama gave it stamp of official approval. His stand on same sex relationships was much criticized by faith-based communities but Obama would not budge.

In fact he pushed the issue of same sex relations- gay, lesbian and transgender rights as part of his foreign policy and attempted to relate with some countries of the world on the basis of their acceptance of the rights of gays and lesbians. It has been suggested that his refusal to visit Nigeria, the few times he toured Africa was in protest to the country’s law which codified same sex relationships as a state offence!

Although Obama constantly flaunted the promotion of human rights including the rights of gays and lesbians as part of his achievements, it remains a low side of his eight-year presidency as far as many African countries and a good section of the US population are concerned.

When Obama assumed office in 2008, African countries and indeed African – Americans were upbeat about the opportunities his presidency would offer. The hope that Africa would occupy a prime place in US foreign policy remained a mirage all through the eight years of Obama’s presidency.

At the end of his tenure, not much can be said about the Obama’s legacy for Africa other than the psychic feeling that an African – American has made history by occupying the White House.

Although Obama brought up a number of African-based initiatives, the achievements or impact on Africa were hardly felt.

Take the “Power Africa Initiative” as a case in point.

Although 120 partners, from both the private and public sectors have pledged about $43billion to fund the initiative, not much has happened on ground in Africa to improve power infrastructure on the continent.

The Trade Africa partnership which Obama introduced was intended to be for the whole continent but was unfortunately narrowed to the East African sub-region (Obama’s roots) which saw just 24 per cent increase in exports to America from the East African Community by the end of 2014.

Other African-based programmes initiated were merely talk shows and conferences that brought no meaningful contributions to the development of the continent.

For instance, the Global Entrepreneurship Summit which held in Morocco in 2014 and in Kenya in 2015 has concentrated on promoting trade between Africa and America but there are no visible statistics to show the extent to which the initiative boosted trade between both countries.

One of such conferences was the US-Africa Leaders Forum which held in Washington DC in 2014 and was well celebrated as the largest gathering of African leaders to be hosted by any US president.

The other is the US-African Business Forum which is meeting for the second time in New York later in the year, on September 21. While these conferences are desirable they do not directly provide solutions to the plethora of problems and development deficits that confront the African continent.

In the final analysis, the legacies of Obama’s presidency can best be appreciated from one’s standpoint and interests. It is best left for posterity to judge.