U.S. foreign policy towards Africa has been adrift for years, even decades, as Washington focused its attention on wars in West Asia, confrontations in the Persian Gulf, and a much-hyped Pivot to Asia. In fact, it’s been 19 years since the launch of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) which is widely regarded as the last major Africa-focused U.S. initiative that had a truly sizable impact.
To be sure, there’ve been a number of new initiatives ranging from Power Africa to Prosper Africa to the creation of the Development Finance Corporation but they’ve all been rather modest in scale, especially when measured against the tens of billions spent by China on the continent during that same time.
