The Chancellor’s trip to Africa: Scholz’s difficult search for allies

Instead of traveling to Kyiv as loudly demanded, Chancellor Scholz visited three partners in Africa. It was also about the Ukraine war – but from a different perspective.

It is a first for the chancellor. One that makes him happy. Olaf Scholz is on the plane to Tillia. It is the new Luftwaffe Airbus A400 M, the Luftwaffe’s transport aircraft, and the Chancellor only knew it as a model up to now. Scholz has now taken a seat in the top center behind the two pilots in the cockpit. On the observer’s seat – and there he sits and observes the situation.

Daniel Pokraka
ARD Capital Studio

With great seriousness he looks at the desert below him. The Ukraine war, Christine Lambrecht, Friedrich Merz and everything else that is causing problems for Scholz at home: it seems far away for a moment.

The deployment of the Bundeswehr in Niger is a role model for Scholz

In general, the chancellor seems satisfied on this day. According to general assessment, the Bundeswehr mission here in Niger is running smoothly. The training of local security forces to fight Islamist terrorists not only works, Nigerien President Bazhoum later speaks of a “model project” and asks the Germans: stay there. Keep training.

At Camp Tillia, where combat swimmers from Eckernförde are trying to turn soldiers into specialists, Scholz stands in khakis between the troops in Tarnfleck and, at 36 degrees outside, speaks with heart and soul, with the soldiers’ commitment. “Now,” he adds, “the protocol stipulates that we should talk casually. I don’t know if you feel relaxed yet?” asks the man, who never loses his distance and Hanseatic coolness even in the desert.

The fact that he traveled halfway across the world to this little spot – 80 kilometers from the Malian border: the troops, the commander of the camp later said, give him credit for it. You know what the chancellor has on his slip of paper. The Ukraine war for example. The theme travels to every capital of his three-country Africa whirlwind tour.

Scholz is looking for allies against Russia

The talks in Senegal and especially in South Africa are more complicated than Scholz’s visit to Niger. Because the deeper meaning of the Chancellor’s trip to Africa lies less in visiting troops than in alliance politics. Outside the Bundeswehr camp in Tillia, Russia’s attack on Ukraine, the consequences and the international reactions are the top issues.

The fact that they are talking in Germany about why the chancellor is now traveling to Africa and not to Kyiv – for Scholz, that is at best annoying background noise. For him, the issue here in Africa is nothing less than the future world order. Not “the West against the rest”, the West against the rest of the world, but a community of values ​​against lawlessness.

Unlike Niger, Senegal and South Africa did not condemn the war of aggression against Ukraine in the United Nations, but abstained. For Scholz, this is a warning signal – he wants the alliance against Russia to be as broad as possible. For him, the following therefore applies: tolerating differences. Africa should stand with the West despite the negative impact both the war and Western sanctions are having on food and fertilizer supplies.

Scholz does not convince South Africa

Scholz therefore ignores it when South African President Cyril Ramaphosa does not always talk about war of aggression like the Chancellor, but only about conflict. The chancellor knows all too well what it means for some desperately poor African countries to take an open stance against Russia.

But when Ramaphosa claims that Scholz had expressed understanding for countries that had voted against the UN resolution condemning Russia, the chancellor, who otherwise speaks so softly and softly, becomes piercingly clear: There is no understanding at all with him. The whole thing is unacceptable. To follow up: “Everyone knows. We support Ukraine.”

Not every guest would dare to publicly correct the host and President of South Africa during his inaugural visit to his own official residence. Despite this, his talks with the presidents of Senegal and South Africa do not appear to be successful at first glance.

The Chancellor claims that there is complete agreement on the assessment of the war – but both stand by their abstentions. South Africa’s President Ramaphosa says he sees the solution to the Ukraine war in dialogue and negotiations – that is, in the means by which democracy was achieved in South Africa.

Chancellor without self-doubt

South Africa’s abstention from condemning Russia’s attack on Ukraine is controversial in the country, and one wonders if Ramaphosa does not have doubts about his stance. With Scholz, on the other hand, one is pretty sure during these three days that he does not question anything when it comes to Ukraine politics. The Chancellor, a man without public doubts.

But also one who, despite all the diplomacy, first talks about “Putin’s brutal war of aggression” at every public appearance, including in Africa. Even at the 70th birthday of the German-South African Chamber of Commerce in a fashionable country club in Johannesburg, there is a short lecture on imperial history for the guests. “A war to expand one’s own territory is called imperialism,” says Scholz. Rewind borders according to history books? “A madness.”

Anyone who sees and hears Scholz in Africa suspects that the former financier has long since become a globally thinking external strategist with very specific ideas about Germany’s future role in the world. Reserved but not unduly modest. Self-confident, but with responsibility as the largest industrial power in Europe.

Chancellor of the middle power Germany

It is no longer a secret that he shares a penchant for describing Germany as a middle power with his Hanseatic role model Helmut Schmidt. And the fact that he, like his predecessor in office, Angela Merkel, hardly seems to need any sleep while searching for Germany’s new role in the world is an advantage in times of crisis. His tour of Africa lasted 71 hours, 32 of them on board an Air Force Airbus. Perhaps it was no coincidence that when the chancellor visited the training camp in Tillia, local Arabs and Touaregs gave the chancellor an artistically painted bed of all things as a gift for his trip to Berlin.