US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen will travel this week to Senegal, Zambia and South Africa to discuss expanding US trade, investment and engagement with African economies.
This comes after a promise by President Joe Biden at the US-Africa Leaders Summit last month that he and members of his cabinet would visit Africa in 2023.
“I think this is the first of many steps to engage Africans on the continent,” said Cameron Hudson, senior associate with the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. But he told VOA: “There is a general message [U.S. officials] they are trying to send as well, which is Washington is present, and that message is not only for the Africans but also for the Chinese, the Russians who compete with the US in these markets.”
Senior US Treasury officials say the purpose of the trip is to exchange ideas with African government officials, private sector leaders, business people and youth, and to deepen US-Africa economic ties, charting new opportunities for trade and investment.
Senegal
Yellen’s first stop is Senegal, where she will visit a business incubator that provides credit and sector-specific technical assistance to young female entrepreneurs in the capital, Dakar.
He will also participate in a business forum with leaders from the American Chamber of Commerce in Senegal and the inauguration of a rural electrification project led by American engineering firm Weldy Lamont.
The project, Treasury officials say, is backed by a US government initiative known as Prosper Africa and $100 million in financing from the US Export-Import Bank.
Secretary Yellen also plans to visit Gorée Island, a UNESCO World Heritage site that served as a slave trading post in West Africa.
The Treasury chief will meet Senegalese President Macky Sall, the chairman of the African Union, whose country is also a leading member of the Economic Community of West African States, or ECOWAS.
This could be an opportunity for Sall to discuss other issues, including unfair international trade practices, said Chisanga Chekwe, president of the Canada-based charity Masomo Education Foundation.
Four African countries – Benin, Burkina Faso, Chad and Mali – are among the most efficient cotton producers in the world, says Chekwe. “Three of the countries are in ECOWAS, and all four are in AU,” Chekwe said. Benin, Burkina Faso and Mali are members of ECOWAS. AU refers to the African Union.
“Here is something interesting. Despite their efficiency, they only contribute 3% to global cotton production,” Chekwe said.
The reason, Chekwe said, is that cotton production is heavily subsidized in most countries, a reality that tends to distort markets.
Zambia
Chekwe is also the author of many books on African issues, especially on Zambia, where he said the United States sees an opportunity to counter Chinese influence with a new government seen as pro-Western.
“It looks like a government that is tired of China. … One possible area of immediate cooperation is the restructuring of a $6 billion debt that Zambia owes to China, and let’s remember that it represents 24-25% of the country’s GDP. [gross domestic product],” he said.
In 2020, Zambia became the first African country in the era of the COVID pandemic to default on its debt. But regardless of whether money is owed to China or to financial institutions, Zambia is not the only African country with a debt burden, Hudson said.
“Ghana, another successful African country, is really experiencing a growing crisis there, for which Washington is seen as partly responsible,” he said. “Because like it or not, Washington is seen as controlling the international financial institutions of the World Bank and the IMF. [International Monetary Fund]who have pushed for austerity measures in African states, kept interest rates on international loans to African states very high, and at the same time criticized concessional loans they have received from China, Russia and others outside a multilateral system”.
The US Treasury Secretary met with Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema at the summit last month and stressed the need to work on a debt plan treatment for Zambia under the Common Framework, an initiative backed by the G-20 and others, as quickly as possible. The G-20 represents the 20 largest economies in the world.
While in Zambia, Yellen will meet Hichilema again, along with her finance minister and the nation’s central bank governor. She will also tour two agriculture-related sites in an effort to promote climate-resilient agriculture and food production and mitigate the effects of the Russian war in Ukraine.
The war has had enormous economic effects on the world’s supply of wheat, energy and fertilizers, “all of which are affecting Africans far more acutely than anyone else in the world. This is on top of a slow recovery from the COVID pandemic,” Hudson said.
During last month’s summit, Biden announced that his administration will spend $2 billion in humanitarian assistance to address acute food insecurity in Africa, to “help ensure that children and families do not have to go to bed hungry.” .
South Africa
In South Africa, Yellen will meet with the finance minister and the governor of the country’s reserve bank.
He will also visit a Ford Motor Co. assembly plant on the outskirts of Pretoria. The facility, which employs more than 4,000 people, is scheduled to become carbon neutral next year.
Yellen’s Africa tour coincides with a visit by IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva to Zambia next week. Chinese Foreign Minister Qin Gang has just completed a five-country African tour that took him to Ethiopia, Angola, Benin, Gabon and Egypt.
Before arriving in Senegal, Yellen will meet her Chinese counterpart, Vice Premier Liu He, in Switzerland on Wednesday.
