The administration of US President Joe Biden has intensified the campaign to increase its influence in Africa, where Washington has begun to give way to its main rivals – Russia and China, writing Bloomberg. As the agency notes, the confrontation between the countries of the continent “is starting to look like a new cold war”.
US Vice President Kamala Harris will make an official visit to Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia next week. Thus, she will become another senior American official after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken who will visit Africa. Additionally, as Bloomberg points out, in December 2022, at the joint US-Africa Summit, President Biden pledged a $55 billion aid package to the continent.
The United States, Russia and China have started to pay a lot of attention to mineral-rich Africa amid the military conflict in Ukraine, as well as the growing confrontation between Washington and Beijing, notes the agency. Thus, each state seeks to win over undecided countries in regions such as Africa.
In particular, Washington calls on African countries to join in supporting Kiev, although many states on the continent have chosen to remain neutral, and some of them have long-standing ties with Russia, including on the issue of weapon supplies. At the same time, the United States intends to sever Egypt and Morocco’s deep ties with Moscow, writes Bloomberg.
However, according to the agency, Washington’s biggest concern is economic rivalry with China, which now acts as Africa’s biggest economic partner. The stalemate between the United States and Beijing in the region includes a race to extract minerals critical to green energy development, as well as a dispute over loan cancellations as countries weigh down debt poor increases with interest rates.
The Zambian President’s Special Assistant for Finance and Investment, Jito Kayumba, meanwhile said the country’s relationship with the United States “does not affect our relationship with China, and vice versa”. “We want to keep all the links,” he said.
According to Cameron Huds, senior associate of the Africa program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, US officials will not say directly that they have entered into competition with Russia and China on the continent. At the same time, “it is clear that they (the Americans) are using these visits to draw a clear distinction between Washington’s and its rivals’ approaches on the issue of influence on Africa,” Huds said.
For example, the United States is focused on promoting democracy in the region and recently pledged $165 million to support fair elections in Africa, writes Bloomberg. At the same time, Washington warns that the Russian Wagner PMC, which operates in some African countries, including Mali and the Central African Republic, is having a destabilizing effect on the continent.
A Biden administration source also noted in an interview with the agency that not only the United States and China are seeking to increase their influence in Africa. Countries like India, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are also actively working on it.
At the end of January, the Financial Times (FT) noted that the Republic of South Africa (SAR) had become less inclined to criticize Moscow and withdrew its demand for the withdrawal of Russian troops from Ukraine after the visit of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov to the country. As sinologist Alexander Gabuev noted in a conversation with the newspaper, African countries can use the confrontation between Russia and the West for their own interests, hoping that one of the parties will offer Africa conditions more favorable cooperation.
