African - American Influence on American Government’s Foreign Trade, Investment and Aid Policies toward Africa: Continuing Challenges

This paper is timely because it critically examines the influence of African-Americans on U.S. trade, foreign direct investment and aid toward the Sub-Saharan African Countries in the late 1970s, a dimension that has been largely overlooked in foreign policy analysis, despite its critical significance. In fact, African-American influence in U.S. trade, foreign direct investment and aid policy toward Africa is an aspect that has so far received scanty attention regarding their ancestral homeland. For much of early 1960s, African-American community identified with African countries in their decolonization struggles, economic sanction against former apartheid South Africa and a complete withdrawal of U.S. military aid to the Tshombe administration in the Congo. The low priority given to African countries in the U.S. foreign policy raises question(s) on the place of African Americans in the U.S. foreign policy, especially in the realm of trade, foreign direct investment and aid between the late 1970s and early 1980s. In this paper, we argue that there is significant relationship between the volume of trade, foreign direct investment and aid enjoyed by African countries from the U.S. foreign policy regarding Sub-Saharan Africa, and the influence of African-Americans on the US-African foreign policy, especially in the late 1970s. The paper examined the active role played by the Congressional Black Caucus, NAACP, Trans-Africa, Africare, African-American political and religious leaders holding important positions in the U.S government. The methodology for this paper is mainly descriptive and relies on Government Documents, Journals, Newspapers, Reports from the United States Department of Trade and Commerce (USDTC), books and the internet, among others. The paper concludes that the activities undertaken by African-Americans have positive impact on the U.S. foreign policy toward their ancestral homeland like other ethnic groups, such as Jewish- Americans; Irish-Americans, Polish-Americans and Armenian- Americans. The conclusion is derived from the volume of trade, foreign direct investment and aid. The policy challenge for this paper is how to maximize the influence of African-American Community on U.S.-African foreign policy. The paper proffers some policy options/strategies to deal with the challenge(s).