Week-long tour of the continent comes at a time when the US is looking for to counter the affect of Russia and China.
Vice President Kamala Harris has stated that america will enhance funding in Africa and assist spur financial development as she started a week-long tour of the continent aimed toward countering the affect of rivals Russia and China.
China has invested closely in Africa in current a long time, together with in infrastructure and useful resource growth, whereas Russian affect has additionally grown, together with by means of the deployment of troops from the non-public navy contractor Wagner Group in a number of nations.
“On this journey, I intend to do work that’s centered on growing investments right here on the continent and facilitating financial development and alternative,” Harris stated on Sunday shortly after touching down in Ghana, the primary vacation spot in a visit that can embody visits to Tanzania and Zambia.
“We’re wanting ahead to this journey as an extra assertion of the lengthy and enduring essential relationship and friendship between the folks of america and people who stay on this continent,” Harris stated.
The administration of President Joe Biden has sought to strengthen ties with Africa, partly to supply a substitute for rival powers, amid world competitors over the continent’s future.
African nations are conscious that there are ulterior motives for this push for a better alliance, observers say.
“African nations usually are not naive … The US has a protracted historical past of meddling in African affairs, supporting dictators versus liberation actions, pushing laborious for US multinationals’ entry to African markets and sources, whereas leaving nations with nothing,” stated Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi, reporting from Washington, DC.
“So the US is saying, ‘That’s all previously now, we’re companions, we will all achieve success’, whereas what we’re listening to from Africa is, ‘We don’t need to select between China, Russia and the US, however we are going to do what we really feel is in our greatest curiosity.’”
In December, forward of the US-Africa Leaders Summit, Washington dedicated $55bn to the continent over the subsequent three years.
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken introduced $150m in new humanitarian assist for Africa’s Sahel area throughout a go to to Niger this month, which got here lower than a yr after he visited South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Morocco, Algeria and Rwanda.
This flurry of diplomacy is “in regards to the geopolitical struggles which can be happening, and the worry in Washington that it’s dropping floor, particularly now in Africa the place there’s a scramble for sources, the place there are rarer minerals to energy the Inexperienced Revolution, and so forth”, Rattansi stated.
Harris will meet Ghana President Nana Akufo-Addo this week and can go to a fort from which individuals had been forcibly despatched to the US through the slave commerce period.
Harris will likely be in Ghana from March 26-29, then in Tanzania from March 29-31. Her last cease is Zambia, on March 31 and April 1. She’s going to meet with the three nations’ presidents and plans to announce public- and private-sector investments.