US revamps Africa strategy as it sounds alarm on China, Russia
The US unveiled a new strategy to forge closer relations with Sub-Saharan Africa, while contending that China and Russia were motivated by narrow self-interests in their attempts to strengthen ties with the region.
With one of the world’s fastest-growing populations, largest free-trade areas by geographical area and most diverse set of ecosystems, Africa has a critical role to play in addressing the world’s defining challenges, the White House said in a document released Monday (download it here) to coincide with secretary of state Antony Blinken’s visit to SA.
Those include ending the coronavirus pandemic, tackling climate change, global food insecurity and terrorism and reversing setbacks to democracy.
The US is determined “to graduate from policies that inadvertently treat Sub-Saharan Africa as a world apart”, it said. “We recognise that we have vital interests in common, and our path towards progress rests on a commitment to working together and elevating African leadership to advance our shared agenda.”
Sub-Saharan Africa has always been a low foreign-relations priority for the US, with the region accounting for just 1.2% of its total two-way trade. Flows have increased since the 2000 enactment of the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which eliminated US import levies on more than 7,000 products from African countries that cut barriers to US investment, operate a market-based economy and protect workers’ rights.
But the continent has forged even closer relations with China, which has largely steered clear of domestic politics and offered aid, loans and investment with few strings attached. Russia has also successfully strengthened ties with Africa in recent months as Western nations tried to isolate it over its invasion of Ukraine, with a significant minority of governments on the continent refusing to condemn its actions.
The US’ key policy priorities in Africa include building democracy and improving governance, promoting development, peace, security trade and investment, and supporting conservation and a move towards cleaner energy, similar to those Blinken outlined in November last year. He stressed at the time that the US didn’t want to limit Africa’s partnership with other countries, a view that appears to have shifted in light of the deterioration in Washington’s own relations with Russia and China.
Permissive environment
The new strategy document states that China sees Africa “as an important arena to challenge the rules-based international order, advance its own narrow commercial and geopolitical interests, undermine transparency and openness, and weaken US relations with African peoples and governments”.
It also warned that Russia views the region as a permissive environment for its state companies and private military companies to operate in, and that they often foment instability for their own strategic and financial benefit. Russia has also used security and economic ties, as well as disinformation, to undercut Africans’ principled opposition to Russia’s war in Ukraine and related human-rights abuses, it said.
The US is seeking a “true partnership” with the continent, Blinken told reporters in Pretoria. “Our commitment to a stronger partnership with Africa is not about trying to outdo anyone else.”
While the US has contributed extensively to Africa over the past three decades, including forging partnerships that have assisted more than 20-million people living with HIV, and electrified 29-million homes and businesses, its efforts to promote democracy, peace and security “have struggled to show the desired impact in recent years”, according to the document.
“Some of our long-standing approaches have become insufficient to meet new challenges in a more contested and competitive world,” it said. “The US government is committed to revitalise and modernise its traditional tools of statecraft to advance US interests across a changing continent.”
View the strategy on AGOA.info at this link.
Read related news articles
USTR releases President Biden’s 2024 trade policy agenda and 2023 annual report
The Office of the United States Trade Representative today released President Biden’s 2024 Trade Policy Agenda and 2023 Annual Report to Congress, which details USTR’s work to advance President Biden’s trade agenda. The President’s 2024 Trade Policy Agenda stands up for workers’ rights and sustainable trade practices, supports U.S. farmers, ranchers, fishers, and food manufacturers, bolsters supply chain resilience,...
05 March 2024
Opinion: 'Continuing challenges for African trade'
The beneficial effects of trade on any economy are well known, and an upscaled trading ability for SA would go a long way to improving its economic position. Benefits would be particularly extensive if they were those flowing from innovative downstream facets of the economy which expanded value-add supply chains. Naturally enough, all this needs a growth-conducive context dependent on a variety of factors. Concrete steps must be...
28 November 2023
Protection likely for African countries that outgrow AGOA
The improved agreement of the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), due to expire in 2025, is likely to have fewer requirements for graduation from the programme to avoid beneficiaries losing out on the lucrative commercial ties with the US, says a top Washington diplomat. The legislation, which was enacted in 2000 and allows Sub-Saharan African countries preferential access to US markets, requires that beneficiaries be graduated out of...
06 November 2023
Statement from President Biden on AGOA reauthorization
I strongly support reauthorization of the African Growth and Opportunity Act— a landmark, bipartisan law that has formed a bedrock for U.S. trade with sub-Saharan Africa for more than two decades. I encourage Congress to reauthorize AGOA in a timely fashion and to modernize this important Act for the economic opportunities of the coming decade. AGOA is facilitating private-sector led economic growth across sub-Saharan Africa by increasing...
01 November 2023
Will Biden visit Africa this year?
President Joe Biden’s agenda is chock-full with many competing and challenging issues. Nevertheless, at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit last December, the president said that he would visit Africa in 2023. No details have been made public, but hopefully planning is well underway for what would be the first visit to the continent by a U.S. president since President Obama went to Kenya and Ethiopia in 2015. While the administration...
22 September 2023
Recalibrating US economic engagement with Africa
Nearly 23 years since the United States established the African Growth and Opportunity Act, or AGOA, the continent it was created for no longer exists. In the last two decades, there have been three major shifts that have worked together to cultivate a new Africa—an Africa that requires a different approach to trade and economic investment. First, there are China’s development initiatives, which have resulted in roads, rails, bridges, and...
18 April 2023
Taking stock of America’s flagship trade programme for Africa
Pankaj Bedi strides through his factory on the edge of Nairobi, past clattering sewing machines, bustling workers and boxes of jeans. None of this would be here, he says, were it not for the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA). The landmark trade policy was introduced by Bill Clinton in 2000, granting duty-free access for more than 6,000 products from sub-Saharan Africa. Two years later, Mr Bedi opened United Aryan, his clothing...
08 February 2023
US and Kenya to hold first round under their Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership (STIP)
The United States and Kenya will hold an in-person round of conceptual discussions under their Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership (STIP) in Washington, DC, from February 6-10, 2023. The United States delegation will be led by Assistant United States Trade Representative Connie Hamilton, and will include representatives from several other government agencies. United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai and then-Kenyan...
04 February 2023
'AGOA shows US has successfully courted Africa' - Columnist
US treasury secretary Janet Yellen is in town this week. While news headlines have focused on the overlapping visits to the continent of Yellen, Russia’s Sergey Lavrov and China’s Qin Gang, Yellen’s comparative advantage is marked. She’s a pre-eminent economist — the first to have led the Federal Reserve, the White House council of economic advisers and the treasury — and she’s here to leverage that experience to build US-Africa...
26 January 2023
US treasury secretary Janet Yellen touts deeper ties with South Africa to help boost trade
The US is seeking to deepen its economic integration with South Africa in pursuit of policies to diversify global supply chains, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen said. Closer ties with nations that share the US’s economic values will help promote so-called friendshoring, in which allies cooperate on manufacturing and sourcing raw materials, Yellen said at a meeting with South African Finance Minister Enoch Godongwana on...
25 January 2023
'Poor relatives always show up, rich ones don't', Biden says as he plans Africa trip
U.S. President Joe Biden capped a summit of 50 African leaders by stressing his administration's deep commitment to Africa, urging the continent's leaders to respect the will of their people, and saying he may come visit. The U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit concluded Thursday with bonhomie, $55 billion (Sh6.8 trillion) in U.S. commitments, and this from Biden: "As I told some of you — you invited me to your countries," he said. "I said, "Be...
16 December 2022