Washington is wooing Africa this week at a major summit in the nation’s capital, the first since 2014. Forty-nine mostly friendly heads of state are attending, plus representatives of the African Union. Uninvited by the Biden administration are five nations -– Burkina Faso, Guinea, Mali, and Sudan -- whose regimes are unrecognized by the African Union because of recent military coups, and Eritrea, a despotic pariah. The Biden administration also chose not to invite Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed of Ethiopia because of his war against Tigray Province. But kleptocracies like Zimbabwe and Equatorial Guinea are represented by their corrupt and oft autocratic presidents.
The wooing is inspired by competition with China and Russia. China’s trade with Africa, much of it in minerals extracted from the ground or fish from the oceans, soared in 2021 to $261 billion, while U.S. trade numbers with Africa have fallen dramatically since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. In 2021, U. S. trade with Africa amounted to a mere $64 billion.
China buys much of Africa’s petroleum, some of its natural gas, and – worryingly – is attempting to mine and send exclusively to Shanghai much of the globe’s cobalt and cadmium from the Democratic Republic of Congo. It also competes vigorously with the West for coltan mined by artisans in the eastern Congo.
Russia’s economic dealings with Africa are less important or threatening, although Russia is mining manganese in South Africa and acquiring diamonds and gold in the Central African Republic, Mali, and the Sudan. Through its notorious Wagner Group, Russia also “protects” the questionably legitimate heads of state in Mali and the Central African Republic and supports the military junta mostly controlling Sudan. Turkey is also newly active in Africa, with embassies, commercial deals, drone sales, and new destinations for Turkish Airlines.
Chinese leaders visit numerous African countries regularly, Americans only episodically although President Biden now intends to make a major flag-waving visit to the continent in 2023 and Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken will doubtless return there again next year (having visited four key countries this summer).
China is much valued throughout most of Africa for its willingness to build and finance much-needed infrastructural improvements. During the past two decades, Chinese state and private firms have paved and extended untold thousands of miles of new roads; refurbished or added to key rail lines (and even created a few from scratch); erected myriad dams for irrigation or hydropower purposes; and constructed and donated the headquarters of the African Union and numerous national ruling party official edifices, innumerable sports stadia, hospitals, schools and universities, and at least one secret intelligence headquarters. China owns coal and copper mines in Zambia, farms in Zimbabwe, and has a military base in Djibouti.
The downside of this helpful readying much of Africa for progress throughout much of the rest of the century is that many of these improvements have been financed by “lending” African states what now seem to be very large and hard to repay sums. Massive construction loans are now having to be returned at a time when Africa is suffering thanks to global inflationary pressures, food shortages, climate disruptions, and the war in Ukraine. Zambia had to default on major loan repayments in 2020, in large part because of the borrowings from China and earlier debts owed to Europe and the IMF. Several other seriously troubled African countries must now contemplate debt rescheduling discussions and possible defaults.
The U.S. and the U.K. are not major creditors. But, unlike China and Russia, they are critical humanitarian funders. China does very little, and Russia almost nothing to assist the African poor, but the U.S. assists health and relief programs throughout the continent worth about $1 billion annually. The U.S. also tries to satisfy the schooling needs of Africa’s neglected children. Through its material contributions to the UN World Food Program, it keeps vast numbers of Africans alive. In most recent years, for example, one-third to one half of all Zimbabweans received food assistance through the World Food Program, much of it PL480 contributed maize grown on farms in the U.S. Midwest.
At the summit, African leaders are demanding a more prominent role in global deliberations. They want one or two seats on the UN Security Council, and already seem poised to become permanent members of the G20. President Biden agrees with the latter recognition of Africa’s long overlooked importance in the world.
That recognition follows Africa’s new heft: demographically, Africa will shortly comprise a quarter of the world’s people. By the end of the century, it should represent nearly a third of all persons on the planet. And most of those new persons will be young, looking for jobs. Nigeria is about to become a more populous country than the U. S., after India and China, and most of the rest of sub-Saharan Africa is doubling populations over the next thirty years. (See #119, “We Are Not Alone: and More Are Coming,” Nov. 17)
The current head of the African Union announced that Africa would itself choose how it should be represented at the G20 and on the Security Council. Long overdue, he and other heads of state from Africa say, is the upgrading of Africa’s role in global governance.
None of these pending shifts should upset world order, Washington, London, Paris, or Brussels. Nor, necessarily, should China’s massive trade with and infrastructural improvements in Africa concern the West. Resources mostly continue to flow to all purchasers without too much constraint. (Lithium is not involved.) What Washington is more concerned about is -- for example – massively corrupt Equatorial Guinea’s flirtations with China regarding a potential Chinese naval base on the Atlantic Ocean, South Africa’s refusal to condemn Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and its recent secret shipments to Russia, and large-scale thieving from a few countries by the Wagner Group. U. S. State Department representatives played major helpful roles in forging a truce between Ethiopia and Tigray and in assisting Sudan’s tentative transition away from military rule. It also is helping Somalia and the African Union battle militant al-Shabaab militants and to protect Niger, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso from jihadist invasions.
Fortunately, Africans are delighted to be welcomed by Washington. They still want American soft power, despite everything despicable that Trump said and did during his presidency. They want access to American knowhow, training, and universities. They want the right to produce their own vaccines. They will continue to criticize U. S. slippages, but that is because they seek nothing less than more attention and care from Washington. President Biden’s promise to travel to the continent will mean as much as more material rewards. Africa wants to be embraced, and the Biden administration now seems – at long last – to spread its arms wide in a full welcome of Africa and African aspirations. That joining with Africa is long overdue and a meaningful partnership with at least the democratic governments of Africa will assist the growth and strengthening of widespread human and economic development on the continent.
This is a brilliant examination of a critical moment in African history .... but there are a couple of other issues: First, there are some African leaders who, I am told, are privately miffed that they have been effectively "summoned" to Washington for this mass summit and that few, if any, receive any one-to-one attention from Biden himself. By contrast, Xi Jinping has actually visited personally a host of these countries that are most valued by China.
Second, a degree of hypocrisy manifests itself at these DC sessions. Take Angola....its recent election showed a questionable result, with the same party that has ruled the country since the end of the civil war still hanging on....by manipulation? And its leader João Lourenço saluted by the Biden folks for his leadership role, despite the reality that Open Democracy suggests the government has “maintained the appearance of a ‘formal democracy’ but distanced itself from basic human rights.”