President Joe Biden (R) toasted at a summit dinner with Senegalese President Macky Sall.
US President Joe Biden has announced billions of dollars in aid and investment for Africa at a summit with heads of state on the continent.
“The United States is all about the future of Africa,” President Biden told the 49 African leaders attending the meeting in Washington, DC.
It is the first meeting organized by Washington in eight years.
The summit is seen as an effort to reassert US influence in Africa to counter China’s involvement.
It also comes after four years in office of Donald Trump, who alienated many African leaders with policy decisions and offensive comments.
Mr. Biden struck a very different tone from his predecessor, speaking optimistically about improving African ties and telling the gathering that “when Africa succeeds, the United States succeeds. Frankly, the whole world succeeds.”
He said the crises facing the world today needed African leadership, ideas and innovations, promising to build on the “vital” investments made in Africa by previous US administrations.
To that end, ahead of the three-day summit which ends on Thursday, National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan said the US would commit $55bn (£44bn) to Africa over the next three years.
Discussions at the summit focused on building on existing programs, including:
But the success of such programs has been slow to materialize. Africa accounts for just over 1% of US foreign trade, dominated by oil imports from Nigeria and Angola.
In his speech on Wednesday, the US president talked about investing $500 million in a major West African port in Benin to reduce transportation costs.
He also mentioned the 350 million dollars that will be spent to promote the digital economy and said that 15 billion dollars worth of agreements were reached at the US-Africa Business Forum.
The US will also sign an agreement with the African Continental Free Trade Area – one of the largest free trade areas in the world – which Biden said will “open up new opportunities for trade and investment” between the US and Africa.
On the sidelines of Wednesday’s summit, Mr. Biden met separately with the leaders of the six African nations holding elections in 2023 to call for free votes.
On Thursday, the US president said he would support the admission of the African Union as a permanent member of the Group of 20 major economies.
Playing catch-up
Analysis by the BBC’s State Department Correspondent Barbara Plett Usher See the article : Facts: Vice President Harris announces commitment to strengthening US partnership with Pacific Islands.
President Biden sought to regain influence in Africa through personal diplomacy, as well as pledging billions of dollars in funding to key sectors and mobilizing private sector investment.
The subtext was that America was trying to catch up with other countries that have developed stronger ties to the continent, including Russia and especially China.
But the message was that the US wanted a strategic relationship with Africa, which has become a key geopolitical player in the world’s fastest growing economies.
The summit will be a success for the Americans if they can prove that Africa is more than a battleground for competition with Beijing and Moscow. They want to show that they can be better partners than China or Russia.
But continuing and sustaining the engagement will be key to demonstrating US commitment, and the White House appointed a special envoy to do so.
