Fifty African leaders will have the opportunity to articulate their common interests and adopt common positions at this week’s US-Africa leaders’ summit in Washington, he writes. Christopher Isike.
US President Joe Biden will host African leaders at this week’s summit, as a group. This has its advantages. The 50 African leaders have the opportunity to articulate their common interests and adopt common positions at the meeting in Washington, DC.
The priorities they should focus on are as follows.
Membership of the African Union in the G20 group of the world’s largest economies. It is important that Africa is represented in international conversations that concern the global economy, democracy and governance, climate change, health and security.
Second, African leaders must continue to press for two permanent seats on the UN Security Council. The transnational challenges of cross-border conflict, terrorism, transnational crime, poverty, and pandemics require the transformation of the UN through the equitable distribution of decision-making power. The UN itself recommended this in 2005. So did the Ezulwini consensus, the official common African position on how to reform the Security Council, adopted in 2005.
Third, they must press for belonging to the Indo-Pacific region for African countries bordering the Indian Ocean. This is a topic for the summit because the United States is a key player in the region. It can help address Africa’s exclusion from this important multilateral decision-making body, an emerging arena of global economic growth.
Fourth, they need to extract support for common African positions already addressed climate change, the energy transition, the recovery of assets from illicit financial flows from the continent and the integration of gender equality in action against climate change.
Leaders should also take advantage of the first summit, which was held under President Barack Obama in 2014.
These are high priorities that can benefit Africa in the short and long term. But, for these to accumulate from the summit, African leaders must have a common purpose and present a united front. They must also be forthright in their commitment to good governance.
What does the 2022 summit promise?
According to the US Department of State,
The summit will demonstrate America’s enduring commitment to Africa and underscore the importance of US-Africa relations and increased cooperation on shared global priorities.
It is intended to build on the shared values between the US and Africa to enhance:
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foster a new economic commitment
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promote peace, security and good governance
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reinforce commitment to democracy, human rights and civil society
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work collaboratively to strengthen regional and global health security
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promote food safety
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respond to the climate crisis
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amplify diaspora ties
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promote education and youth leadership.
Seen from this point of view, this summit must be evaluated as an ongoing commitment.
What was achieved in 2014
At the 2014 summit, President Obama proposed investments of $20 billion in electricity, $7 billion in government financing to encourage US exports and investment in Africa, and annual spending of $110 million to help African countries build forces of peace-keeping.
Several technical agreements were also signed. These include the Investment Framework Agreement with the Economic Community of West African States. It provides a coordination mechanism for trade and investment matters.
President Obama also called on the US Congress to expand and improve the African Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which provides duty-free access to goods from designated African countries to the US. He also announced a new investment US$110 million a year for three to five years to train African soldiers to fight terrorism and insurgency through the Rapid Response Partnership program.
In fact, Africa benefited from several of these initiatives, although many remain unfulfilled. For example, in power generation and distribution, the “Power Africa” project became an enhanced platform to illuminate Africa. Its original mandate was to add 30,000 megawatts of cleaner, more reliable electricity generation to connect 590 million people in Africa. So far, 6,501 megawatts have been generated, providing power to 165.4 million people for the first time.
Prior to the first African summit in 2014, Agoa, which was due to end in 2015, was extended to 2025. Since then, it has allowed African countries to export (duty-free) US$33 billion worth of non-oil products between 2014 and 2021. In addition, $267 million was budgeted for the period 2015-2017 for capacity building support for the African armed forces.
Looking to the future
The 2022 summit is expected to produce some concrete results as well.
For example, the United States will continue to promote the “infrastructure card” in Africa. This is widely believed to be a challenge for China’s “Belt and Road” initiative, the massive infrastructure project that aims to stretch from East Asia to Europe.
It includes the ambitious $600 billion G7 Global Infrastructure Partnership Initiative led by the United States. As stated in its Africa Strategy released in August 2022, the US proposes
leverage and expedite co-financing and investment to deliver game-changing projects to strengthen US and African economies, diversify supply chains, and advance national security.
The initiative will also complement new and existing efforts, including Prosper Africa, Power Africa, Feed the Future and a new initiative for digital transformation, to help close the global infrastructure gap on the continent.
Most of the “model projects” are already underway. These include the US-supported solar power project in Angola and the vaccine production facility in Senegal. Another is the submarine telecommunication cables that connect Singapore and France, passing through Egypt and the Horn of Africa.
However, the continent must be prepared to take advantage of these and other opportunities offered by the superpower competition in Africa between the US, China and Russia. This is likely to last for decades, given the global geostrategic value of Africa.
What African leaders must offer
African leaders must also step up.
First, they must answer whether the state in Africa is still fit for purpose, having been designed to be extractive and exploitative. That also produced a notion of parasitic rule that continues. This partly explains why, decades after political independence, many African states struggle to fulfill the basic functions of a state: protecting citizens from internal and external aggression, good governance and service delivery.
They also need to explore and flesh out the idea of providing shared cooperative regional leadership among sub-regional leaders on the continent such as Egypt, Kenya, Nigeria, South Africa and Rwanda.
Finally, Africa must invest in more research centers that study the superpowers and use the knowledge to develop national and regional policies towards them. So one day we will talk about Africa-US politics and Africa-China politics, instead of always the other way around.
These are ways to prevent Africa from being singled out by the superpowers. Hopefully, in the future, superpower leaders will visit Addis Ababa instead of 50+ African leaders visiting a leader elsewhere.
Christopher Isike, Director, US African Center for Study, University of Pretoria
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
