With the Russian military now moving on Ukraine, the consequences of Europe’s latest war are being felt around the world. Asian markets fell sharply today while oil prices shot up, crossing the $100 mark for the first time in seven years.
While this is good news for the handful of African oil-producing states who will no doubt benefit from higher prices, it’s downright terrible for hundreds of millions of families across the continent who’ve had to grapple with rising food prices and watch in real-time how inflation has vaporized their already limited purchasing power.
Africa is going to suffer in other ways. Much of the recent momentum in the U.S. and Europe about mounting a credible challenge to China’s Belt and Road Initiative in Africa will slow considerably, if not come to a temporary halt.
Sure, the White House, 10 Downing Street, and the European Commission are all still keen to do what they can to curtail China’s influence in Africa and other developing regions, but that’s just going to have to wait until the situation in Ukraine stabilizes.
The problem is that there just isn’t enough bandwidth in the foreign policy establishments in these Western countries to simultaneously focus on a Russian war and roll out their largest global infrastructure programs in more than a generation.
Take Daleep Singh as an example. Until just a few weeks ago, the Deputy National Security Advisor in the White House had been hopscotching around the world, including to countries in Africa, to rally support for the administration’s B3W plan. While I don’t know for sure, it’s highly improbable that B3W is now very high on his to-do list. More likely, Singh and his team are probably consumed with assessing the impact of the Russian-Ukrainian war on U.S. interests and helping to craft the administration’s next move.
Infrastructure in Africa?Now is just not a good time. We’ll get back to you on that.
So, it’s entirely possible that we’re going to see a repeat of what happened during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars when the Western powers got bogged down and opened huge opportunities for China to advance its interests unimpeded across Africa and the Global South.
