Obama's Legacy on Africa Lacks Compared to Bush

President Barack Obama today becomes the first sitting president to address the African Union, a symbolic milestone that would suggest an administration that has been focused on engaging the continent and pursuing strategic policies to promote growth and development, encourage good governance and end conflict.

But with only 17 months remaining in his term, Obama has yet to achieve any real policy victories in Africa. And as he has struggled to balance a full plate of crises in other parts of the world, the accomplishments of the nation's first African-American president appear noticeably thinner than those of his predecessor, former President George W. Bush.

[OPINION: Why Obama's Africa Trip Matters]

Obama in his latest Africa trip -- the fourth of his presidency -- spent two days in Kenya, attending the Global Entrepreneurship Summit, and meeting with government officials and business and civil society leaders. He then traveled to Ethiopia to meet with officials from African governments to discuss regional and counterterrorism issues. A focus of Tuesday's African Union speech will be security, as stability on the continent has been threatened by terrorist groups and sectarian infighting in a host of countries. Obama is also expected to speak to the 54-member continental congress of nations about the importance of good governance and the need to respect human rights.

However, it could amount to too little, too late, for the administration to claim a substantive legacy in this part of the world.

Cameron Hudson, who served as director for African affairs on the staff of the National Security Council from 2005-2009 under the Bush and Obama administrations, says their difference in Africa policies is that Bush appeared to have a more solid strategy in how to approach the continent and what he wanted to accomplish there.

"When Bush came into office, there were civil wars going on in Sudan, Congo, Angola, Liberia, Sierra Leone. And by the end of his first term, all those civil wars were over," Hudson says. "There was, I think, a very deliberate effort in the first term of the Bush administration to end those civil wars, and by ending those civil wars, enabling him in the second term to launch a very aggressive development program."

When it comes to Obama, "I would question just generally what his vision for the continent was," Hudson says.

Obama, the nation's first African-American president, has been criticized for not meeting expectations when it comes to prioritizing the continent where his Kenyan father was born. His heritage has been a balancing act for Obama, whose historic presidency has been marred by accusations from "birthers," who alleged he was born in Kenya and was ineligible to be president.

Africa had high hopes for Obama in particular because of his roots, but even if expectations may have been unfair from the beginning, Hudson says the president has still struggled to communicate a strategy.

"Expectations for what he was going to achieve were completely unreasonable and outsized," Hudson says, noting that just this week Obama declared himself a "son of Kenya." "For the past six, seven years, he really eschewed that ... and it's only on this last trip he's really embraced that kind of narrative, because I think up until now that narrative has been a yoke that he's kind of dragged around."

Obama's most substantial initiative on the continent is arguably Power Africa, which was launched in 2013 with the goal of doubling access to electricity in sub-Saharan Africa. The White House said a more than $7 billion investment over five years would increase access by at least 20 million new households and businesses. Last year, during the U.S.-Africa Leader's Summit -- the first gathering of its kind -- in Washington, D.C., Obama tripled those initial goals to 60 million electricity connections and 30,000 megawatts of energy.

[PHOTOS: Obama Visits Kenya, Ethiopia in Africa Trip]

Feed the Future, the Obama administration's global hunger and food security initiative, focuses on agricultural production to boost harvests, economic development and trade. Twelve of the 19 Feed the Future countries are in Africa.

Obama last month also signed a reauthorization for the African Growth and Opportunity Act, begun under Bush, that allows for duty-free imports to the U.S. from eligible sub-Saharan countries.

And last year, Obama ordered U.S. resources to respond to a massive Ebola outbreak in West Africa.

Yet even with those initiatives, Obama has a hard time measuring up to the accomplishments of Bush's development agenda when it comes to Africa. Bush started the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) to provide antiretroviral treatment and care for HIV/AIDS patients primarily in Africa -- a program credited with saving millions of lives. He also increased development funding for the continent across a number of sectors, like education.

"[The U.S. Agency for International Development] went from $150 million when I started to $800 million by the time [Bush] left office in assistance, and much of that was to Africa," says Andrew Natsios, USAID administrator from 2001 to 2006. "When I started at [US]AID the total development program, not including food aid and or emergencies for civil wars, ... it went from $1.2 billion when [Bush] started in early 2001 to $7 billion when he left office. So it was 600 percent increase. That's a massive increase."

Amid massive Chinese investment in African development in recent years, Power Africa has been criticized for not producing the promised results quickly enough. But the administration argues the scope of the program meant results won't be seen immediately.

"Power Africa, which like PEPFAR, is building up in strength and capacity, will double the amount of power to the African continent," National Security Adviser Susan Rice said. "This is going to take time, as PEPFAR did. But it will be itself a very transformative initiative."

E.J. Hogendoorn, deputy Africa program director at the nonprofit International Crisis Group, says it shouldn't be a surprise that Power Africa progress isn't yet tangible.

"My experience in Africa is that things always take longer than you would hope. These large-scale infrastructure projects are not easy to get off the ground, particularly in places where it's actually difficult to do business," Hogendoorn says. "I do think we need to be somewhat patient about this."

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Hogendoorn said the administration needs to focus more on ending many of the ongoing conflicts in Africa: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Central African Republic, Somalia, Sudan and South Sudan, among others.

"Unfortunately, the reality is that Africa remains a relatively lower priority issue for most of the political establishment in Washington and that's reflected in the Obama administration's foreign policy priorities," Hogendoorn says.

With a Middle East in chaos, conflicts in Africa are not receiving the level of attention as the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan did, as well as the fight against the Islamic State group. But terrorist groups are also a risk in Africa, with Boko Haram and al-Shabab regularly targeting civilians. And wars in Africa continue to rage, with some of the conflicts Bush ended heating up again under Obama.

Bush was instrumental in the signing of a peace agreement that ended the war in Sudan and led to the creation of South Sudan. The independence vote took place under Obama in 2011, but Natsios says Obama has not done enough since then to end the civil war that erupted there in December 2013.

"They did a very good job on South Sudan in getting the vote on independence, but I think they have fallen down since then. I think they had other issues in the Middle East, there was Russia and Ukraine, [the Islamic State group] and all that," Natsios says. "There have been a few statements made and the mid-level diplomats are trying very hard, but in terms of the president himself engaging, the first time I've seen him engaged on South Sudan is right now."

Obama and other African leaders discussed South Sudan in meetings Monday, to see how they can bring about a peace agreement that has eluded the warring forces of President Salva Kiir and former vice president Riek Machar. The officials set a deadline of Aug. 17 for a peaceful solution.

"We don't have a lot of time to wait. The conditions on the ground are getting much, much worse," Obama said in Addis Ababa on Monday. "And part of my interest in calling together this meeting was to find out how we can help."

In response to criticism that Obama has not been as "transformative" when it comes to Africa as Bush was, Rice said trade and investment between the U.S. and Africa has never been stronger, and the Obama administration has supported and built on PEPFAR.

"I think President Obama's record on Africa will not only match that of his predecessors, but I predict with confidence we'll exceed," Rice said.

Yet with under two years left in office, that legacy may be difficult to achieve.

Teresa Welsh is a foreign affairs reporter at U.S. News & World Report. E-mail her at twelsh@usnews.com and follow her on Twitter.