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 the USA will improve funding in Africa and assist spur financial progress as she started a week-long tour of the continent geared 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 way of the deployment of troops from the personal navy contractor Wagner Group in a number of international locations.
“On this journey, I intend to do work that’s centered on rising investments right here on the continent and facilitating financial progress and alternative,” Harris stated on Sunday shortly after touching down in Ghana, the primary vacation spot in a visit that can embrace visits to Tanzania and Zambia.
“We’re wanting ahead to this journey as an additional assertion of the lengthy and enduring essential relationship and friendship between the folks of the USA and people who reside 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 more in-depth alliance, observers say.
“African nations aren’t naive … The US has an extended historical past of meddling in African affairs, supporting dictators versus liberation actions, pushing exhausting for US multinationals’ entry to African markets and sources, whereas leaving international locations with nothing,” stated Al Jazeera’s Shihab Rattansi, reporting from Washington, DC.
“So the US is saying, ‘That’s all prior to now now, we’re companions, we are able to 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’ll 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 “concerning 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 fortress from which individuals have been forcibly despatched to the US in the course of the slave commerce period.
Harris shall be in Ghana from March 26-29, then in Tanzania from March 29-31. Her remaining cease is Zambia, on March 31 and April 1. She is going to meet with the three international locations’ presidents and plans to announce public- and private-sector investments.