Africa-US summit: Joe Biden calls for renewed partnership with Africa

Joe Biden called for a broad partnership with Africa on Wednesday, on the second day of a summit in Washington that brought together some 50 of the continent’s leaders and where more contracts were announced. “When Africa is successful, the United States is successful. The whole world is doing it, ”said the American president in a speech in which he shelled a series of investments from the United States for the African continent.

The Biden administration intends to unlock $55 billion for Africa within three years in sectors as diverse as digital, infrastructure, health or even in the fight against climate change and renewable energy. The United States refuses to talk about competition with China on the African continent and the American president has not openly alluded to the Asian giant. But they do not hide the desire to strengthen ties with African countries, when they have been accused of having neglected them.

A summit in a similar format took place in 2014 under the presidency of Barack Obama. “We cannot solve the challenges before us without leadership from Africa. I’m not trying to be nice. It’s a fact,” Joe Biden continued.

“This partnership is not meant to create political obligations, create dependency, but to spur shared successes and create opportunities,” he said, noting that “Africa’s economic transition depended on good governance, healthy people and affordable energy.”

Joe Biden also brought together in the White House the leaders of six African countries (Gabon, Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo) where elections will be held next year, which the United States will monitor. to close. The United States will be careful to ensure that they are “free, fair and credible,” presidential adviser Jake Sullivan warned on Monday. Biden had yet to receive the 49 African leaders present in Washington for a dinner at the White House and will participate again in Thursday’s summit, which for its last day will be dedicated to food insecurity aggravated by the war in Ukraine.

On Wednesday, the US president particularly welcomed the nearly $15 billion in contracts promised on the sidelines of the summit by the American and African private sectors in a range of fields including high technology. The United States, for its part, has announced that it will invest 350 million dollars for the development of digital technology on the continent. Among the announcements, the most important came from the credit card leader Visa, which announced its intention to invest 1 billion dollars for online payments in Africa, an area where China is the leader.

Cisco and its partner Cybastion have announced for their part 858 million dollars for cybersecurity, through a dozen contracts in Africa, while the ABD group intends to allocate 500 million to the development of “cloud” technology in the Ivory Coast in particular. The giant Microsoft has announced a program aimed at facilitating satellite Internet access for 10 million people worldwide, half of them in Africa, as part of efforts to bridge the persistent digital divide between rich and poor.

This project should bring Internet access for the first time to remote regions of Egypt, Senegal and Angola, Microsoft president Brad Smith told AFP.

In addition, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken attended a signing ceremony for a $504 million agreement with Benin and Niger in association with the Millennium Challenge Corporation, which funds projects in countries considered to have good governance.

The project aims to connect the port of Cotonou to Niger’s landlocked capital, Niamey, which is expected to benefit some 1.6 million people, according to Washington. “These projects will bear the hallmark of the American partnership,” noted Antony Blinken. “They will be transparent, of high quality and will be judged by the people they serve,” he added in a veiled allusion to China, which the United States accuses of lacking transparency and increasing the debt burden of African countries.