JOHANNESBURG—Just over a year has passed since the Biden administration launched a new strategy in Africa, seen by many analysts as a response to an already-large Chinese presence, and Russia’s expanding footprint on a continent that continues to be beset by poverty, coups, corruption, and war.
In August 2022, the “U.S. Strategy Toward Sub-Saharan Africa” document set out a bold vision for “21st century U.S.–Africa partnership.”
It emphasized traditional U.S. policy priorities—transparent governance, democracy, and security—but also embraced new policy objectives in Africa, including climate adaptation and post-pandemic economic recovery.
Washington reinforced its strategic objectives with a pledge of $55 billion during the U.S.–Africa Leaders’ Summit in December 2022.
“The new strategy told a story of sorts. That American leaders believe Africa to be enormously important, both to U.S. interests and to global wellbeing,” said Tino Cuellar, former Supreme Court justice, former White House official, and current president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Last week, the think-tank in Washington, held an event reflecting on “shifts and continuities” in U.S.–Africa relations.
Mr. Cuellar said the Biden administration’s revised strategy was a “non-negotiable move,” given Africa’s growing importance in global affairs.
“By 2050 Africa will be home to a quarter of the global population and an even larger workforce. Africa hosts the world’s second-largest rainforest and a third of the world’s critical minerals.
“African countries comprise one of the world’s largest voting groups at the United Nations General Assembly; 28 percent of all the votes and holds three non-permanent seats on the U.N. Security Council.
“All this makes a difference to policymakers in Washington and throughout Africa. At the U.S.–Africa Leaders’ Summit, countries announced new initiatives related to the digital economy, food security, and the energy transition,” he said.
Mr. Cuellar told the audience that Africa would play an “active and critical” role in shaping the world’s future. “African cities have grown by 500 million people over the last 30 years, making them the fastest-growing cities in the world. The policies tested on issues like land use, for example, and green energy, will contain lessons for cities from Singapore to San Francisco,” he stated.
“Consider the climate crisis, which requires us to dramatically curb emissions at the very moment that more than two billion people around the world, many in Africa, have their sights set on joining the global middle class.
“As home to more than three-quarters of the world’s unelectrified population, the test of our ability to support a just energy transition that benefits both the planet and its people will run through Africa.”
Mr. Cuellar said Africa’s technological footprint was already dynamic, and growing rapidly.
“Cities across Africa are emerging as important hubs for technology development and business innovation. In 2020, even as COVID-19 was testing the economy, Africa was the world’s fastest-growing venture capital market.
“The continent also boasts some 700,000 professional software developers, by some accounts more than the state of California.”
He added, though, that Africa was a complex place.
“Geopolitical shifts have highlighted that African countries do not, and never have, acted as a monolith.
“This is clear in South Africa’s recent joint military exercises with Russia and China, and Egypt’s and Ethiopia’s entrance to the BRICS bloc, and the fact that some African countries have positioned themselves as independent mediators between Russia and Ukraine.”
Judd Devermont, special assistant to the president and senior director for African affairs at the National Security Council (NSC), helped draft the Biden administration’s new approach in Africa.
He called it an “inflection point” in Washington’s national security strategy, which was based on the conclusion that Africa would increasingly be “critical” to making decisions about the future of the international community.
“In every single priority issue for our government, for our people, African governments, African peoples, the continent, has to be at the table, whether that’s climate change, food insecurity, or defining the rules of the road on trade, emerging technology and cyber,” said Mr. Devermont.
He added that the Biden administration was committed to increasingly involving Africa, in the form of regional blocs, the African Union (AU), and individual countries, in issues of global importance.
“We should think about Africa’s place in the Indo-Pacific, in the Atlantic Ocean; in the Red Sea,” said Mr. Devermont.
To reflect the U.S. commitment to Africa, he said President Biden was advocating for a permanent African seat on the U.N. Security Council; had called for the AU to join as a permanent member of the G20; and had agreed to support African calls for reform at international financial institutions.
Mr. Devermont said the administration’s Digital Transformation Africa project was an example of the U.S.’s renewed interest in, and commitment to, African development.
“This is an $800 million program focused on upskilling and creating an enabling environment. If you look at that and other investments, like $ 300 million into data centers in Ghana, or the vice president’s [Kamala Harris] call to action to create a philanthropic private sector arm for digital transformation, that’s over a billion-dollar commitment to the digital economy and digital connections [in Africa.]”
Mr. Devermont said he was confident that an expanded BRICS bloc, which now included three of Africa’s major economies in the form of Egypt, Ethiopia, South Africa—allied with China and Russia—was not a threat to U.S. policy in Africa.
“It’s countries’ sovereign right to join whichever organizations they want. It just so happens that some of our key African partners are part of it. I certainly don’t see an expanded BRICS as a rejection of the United States.
“What I think is significant is that at the G20, President Biden, [Indian] Prime Minister [Narendra] Modi, South African President [Cyril] Ramaphosa, and Brazil’s President Lula [da Silva], recommitted to the G20 as a preeminent organization for economic cooperation.
“So while there’s BRICS, we have strong relations with most BRICS countries and those will continue.”
Mr. Devermont said growing numbers of private African companies were choosing to take advantage of the administration’s Prosper Africa initiative.
“This is the front door through which African companies can take advantage of all the instruments we have, like the Development Finance Corporation or the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment,” he explained.
Molly Phee, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs, told the gathering the past year had seen senior U.S. government officials visiting Africa to engage with continental leaders on an unprecedented scale.
These included Vice President Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
Ms. Phee said this was a strong indication that Washington was “catching up with the reality” that Africa was already of immense strategic importance to the United States, and that the Biden administration intended to demonstrate that by means of a series of “strong” initiatives designed to improve African lives fundamentally.
“The State Department’s now established a Bureau of Health Security. We hope it will ensure the continuation of the massively successful U.S. investment in health in Africa, whether it’s the lodestar PEPFAR (President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) program or our President’s malaria initiative,” said Ms. Phee.
“There’s a lot of effort underway to consolidate the work we do in health because if you don’t have good health you can’t have good development.
“We’re also extremely interested in food security. We’ve had the flagship program Feed the Future, which has done so much to contribute to the development of [agricultural] productivity in Africa, which is only going to become more important given climate change and given anticipated demands for food production.”
She pointed out that the Biden administration had hired one of the world’s leading agronomists, Dr. Cary Fowler, to be U.S. Special Envoy for Global Food Security, and he had a strong focus on Africa.
“He’s developing climate-resistant seeds and using soil mapping to identify the best places to grow the seeds to increase productivity,” said Ms. Phee.
She added that the United States was committed to African economic growth and that billions of dollars in deals had been discussed at the Leaders’ Summit.
“Now we need to turn those into reality,” she emphasized.
Ms. Phee said African needs in terms of capital and liquidity had soared because of factors such as conflict and the pandemic.
“If those fundamental problems aren’t resolved, we’re not going to be able to have the kind of success we want in driving American investment and trade with Africa,” she stated.
“That’s why you see Secretary Yellen doing a lot, the administration proposing new funding and new authorities to Congress for the World Bank and the IMF [International Monetary Fund] to sort of leverage their capabilities, for us in effect to guarantee they’ll do more to help African leaders … invest in infrastructure and sectors like agriculture.”
But, said Ms. Phee, the Biden administration remained extremely concerned about all the conflict, coups, and military interventions happening in Africa.
“We now have the Global Fragility Act. What, to me, was exciting about the work that was done to develop that legislation was a review of 20 years of U.S. conduct and activity in the wake of 9/11, and the conclusion that security is important and essential to progress, but when we overinvest in security and don’t pay enough attention on governance and economic development, those security gains can’t be sustained.”
She said the United States was determined to continue promoting stability and preventing conflict in Africa.
“I see the immediate challenges we’re facing as largely the result of decades of inadequate attention, both by Africans and their partners, on the issues of governance, particularly how to make democracy deliver, and on economic development.”
President Biden recently appointed former assistant secretary of state for African affairs and former ambassador to Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe, Johnnie Carson, as Special Presidential Representative for U.S.–Africa Leaders’ Summit Implementation.
Mr. Carson pointed out that there was an eight-year gap between the 2014 summit and the event held in Washington in December 2022.
“We’ve got to do a better job than this,” he told the conference. “Eight years is far too long a gap between those sorts of direct, high-level engagements.”
Mr. Carson said his recommendation was that the summits be held every three years, interspersed by “mini-summits.”
“These would be high-level summits that would focus on digital technology for example, or manufacturing, urbanization, climate change, in which there’d be presidential and ministerial visits of people coming to the United States, at the invitation of the White House, to engage on issues.”
Mr. Carson said there were now four officials at the State Department focused solely on summit implementation.
He had also been instrumental in establishing a Diaspora Engagement Council.
“This is a program designed for the president and secretary of state to hear and take advantage of the voices of the African communities in the United States; to strengthen the relationship between the administration and the black community at large, and also to take advantage of the enormous knowledge and expertise and energy that exists in the diaspora community and to strengthen our relationships with African communities overseas.
“The individuals on this council will provide a dynamic, new voice that’ll feed into the State Department and into the White House, providing ideas, energy, and initiatives on the way forward.”
