The three-day U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit wrapped up in Washington, D.C. on Thursday with a declaration by President Joe Biden that his administration is “all in” when it comes to Africa.
The White House worked very hard to change the narrative about its Africa foreign policy, specifically that it’s focused on African countries rather than confronting China’s growing influence on the continent.
This week, Eric, Cobus and Geraud discuss whether the U.S. was successful and what were the main takeaways from this week’s summit.
Show Notes:
- The New York Times: Biden Courts African Leaders, but Some Are Skeptical of Big Promises by Declan Walsh
- Al Jazeera: The US scramble for Africa by Marwan Bishara
- Politico: ‘If it’s just symbolic, it’s going to be a disaster’: Biden’s Africa summit challenge by Phelim Kline
Transcript:
Eric: Hello, and welcome to another edition of the China in Africa Podcast, a proud member of the Sinica Podcast Network. I’m Eric Olander. And today, in our regular Week-in-Review Edition, I am joined by my two favorite China Africa analysts; Cobus van Staden, China Global South Managing Editor in Johannesburg, and Christian Geraud Neema in Mauritius, our francophone editor. A very good morning to both of you.
Cobus: Good morning.
Geraud: Good morning, Eric.
Eric: You must be exhausted after this week. We have been up morning to night covering the big events that have been unfolding in Washington all week in the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. This was the first summit of its kind in eight years. The Biden administration really wanted to make a big effort to show that it’s breaking with past, certainly the previous administration, and it also wanted to use this week to showcase how its approach to Africa is different than that of China and other major players.
It really wanted to reemphasize many of the same themes that it outlined in its new Strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa that it unveiled back in August, I think it was, and they really hit those notes throughout the course of the week. What we’re going to do today is we’re going to pick a few of the big themes that came up, especially talking about China, of course. We’re going to get Cobus’s and Geraud’s reaction to it. I want to first lay out and make the case for all the different things that happened this week. We’re going to start on the positives and then we’re going to go to a few of the more critical assessments of it.
Let’s first start with President Biden himself. On Wednesday, he gave the Keynote Address. The big takeaway is that he said the U.S. is all in when it comes to Africa.
President Biden: The United States is all in on Africa’s future. Africa’s economic transition depends on good government, healthy populations, and reliable and affordable energy. These things business seeks out when they’re looking to invest. They attract new opportunities and they launch new partnerships. And the United States is committed to supporting every aspect — every aspect of Africa’s inclusive growth. All of you — all of you, the deals you’ve signed, the investments we’ve made together are concrete proof of the enduring commitment we’re making to one another: government to government; business-to-business; person to person.
The most important, and this is just the beginning, there’s so much more we can do together and that we’ll do together. So, thank you for your participation today; for being part of another historic U.S.-African Leaders Summit. We’ve got a lot of ground to cover in the coming days and I’m eager to listen to the priorities you have for the future of the partnership between our nations. Thank you.
Eric: Okay, Geraud, he’s eager to listen. Lots was accomplished. You were tasked this week to kind of keep track of everything that happened. Go through some of the highlights for us. Bring us up to date on what happened at the summit.
Geraud: The summit was really interesting and there are some good commitment and deal that was signed during the summit, and that highlights well, the U.S. is showing willingness to move forward in Africa. One of the interesting deal that we followed was, of course, when it comes to mining industry. There was the one, the MOU signed between the U.S., Zambia, and DRC on the value chain and critical minerals. We have to remember that last April, the two countries, the DRC and Zambia, they signed an agreement on how they’re going to work together to create critical mineral value chain locally and building EV battery industry in the country.
With that signing, the U.S. is showing support to the two countries, and especially sending a message that we’re still present in that discourse. Even though it’s a non-binding agreement, still it’s a kind of strong message from the U.S. to say, “We want to be part of the discussion. We really want to show that we are going to be present.” How the implementation’s going to happen — we’ll have to see. The second interesting deal happened still in the mining industry was the KoBold. KoBold minerals signing a deal with Zambia. And there, it was really interesting because Secretary Gina Raimondo was giving the context on how they reached the point of signing with Zambia because of the good business environment, rule of law, political stability, and everything.
And it was really interesting because when Biden was speaking, we can see, we can echo the same element. The same comment came through from different people in the U.S. administration when they were talking about signing deals in Africa, and they were coming with the same element of political stability, a good environmental, rule of law, and everything. Some other deal; we had Visa, and Visa were committed to $1 billion for the next five years in Africa in terms of providing mobile payment service for micro and small medium size business across the continent. We have another deal coming from U.S.-Exim Bank; that signed a MOU with U.S.-Exim Bank and Africa-Exim Bank for $500 million to boost trade, investment, and transportation, especially with airlines in Africa.
So, Prosper Africa; that signed another deal, another MOU with Future Africa Fund, which is a fund that helps small medium enterprise and startups in Africa. They want to boost new startups in Africa because… For those who don’t know, Future Fund Africa is the one that has like Flutterwave and Andela — one of those big startups in Africa. So yeah, we had some interesting big deals and commitments throughout different sectors on the continent.
Eric: In all, there are about $15 billion of deals that were signed. A lot of those are MOUs, so they’re not contracts. Just to note that, that doesn’t mean they always follow through, but they tend to lead to something. So, 15 billion was the number from the private sector. $55 billion was the number from the government. And this was very interesting. Cobus, I’d like to get your take on this. This was announced on Monday by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan at the White House during a press conference.
Speaker 6: In Africa, we have the perception that the U.S. look down on Africa. So, with this summit, what make you feel so comfortable?
Jake Sullivan: We are bringing the resources to the table in significant numbers. And if you compare what the United States is committing over the next three years to what any other country is committing, I think we stack up extremely favorably.
Eric: Okay, any other country is French for China, of course, because nobody else is going to be bringing in that kind of money. Cobus, the $55 billion number I think was supposed to be a major headline of this event. They announced it on Monday. It got zero traction. Nobody really picked up on it. The African media, the African press didn’t talk about it — is a big contrast, in many respects, to the Chinese numbers that come at the end of FOCAC meetings where everybody’s looking; will it be 20 billion? Will it be 40 billion? Will it be 60 billion? Why, in your view, did the 55 billion number that Jake Sullivan announced on Monday fall flat?
Cobus: I think because one then immediately needs to attach an asterisk to it saying that it’s not all new funding. It includes a lot of preexisting programs and preexisting commitments — some of which go back years and which encompass America’s aid spending on Africa. 55 billion is impressive, definitely, but at the same time, I think the reason why it didn’t become a headline is because it actually isn’t that new.
Eric: That’s not entirely fair though because the Japanese recycle their numbers, the Chinese recycle their numbers. It’s not all new money. The Chinese, in fact, don’t even always spend all the money that they commit. It just seems like that’s not entirely a fair standard. I’m not blaming you. Clearly, people in Africa were not impressed by this number. We tracked the media coverage all week, and nobody really got excited about that.
Cobus: Yes, it’s very muted media coverage in Africa about the entire summit. No one really cared about it. Yeah.
Eric: One of the big problems with this number, and Geraud, let’s get your take on this as well, was the fact that again, they didn’t break down the number. What the Chinese do when they announce at FOCAC, and this is what they did at the last FOCAC last year, is they announced their number. And remember, they said $10 billion for SDRs, 10 billion for this, $5 billion for this — and it was much more tangible. So, I think that’s one reason. The United States just said the 55 billion number, that was it. There was no accompanying information. There was no context to it. Number two…
Cobus: It is interesting, sorry to interrupt, like, it is interesting that, that used to be the approach of the Chinese follow and told to anyone. Remember in 2021, we were doing all of this math to try and get to a final number because they were breaking it down.
Eric: She outlined 40 billion. He didn’t outline the last 20 billion.
Cobus: Yeah. But it was interesting to see how the Chinese chose not to run with a big number like last time. And this time the Americans did. There’s liabilities on both sides of that calculation, I think.
Eric: No, there’s no doubt. And Japan, for a long time, avoided a number. And at the last TICAD summit, they came out with a $30 billion number. That got quite a bit of coverage, no doubt about it. Geraud, you and I were talking about it as well. It’s a little frustrating from the point of view of the American government in the sense that they provide $11 to $12 billion a year in humanitarian aid. So, if you map that out over three years, that’s about $33, $34 billion of the total $55 that’s existing already. If you take into account some of the DFC money, that’s the Development Finance Corporation money, a third of their $60 billion budget is allocated for Africa. They probably carved a portion of that, put that into the 55 billion. They didn’t tell us where the money’s coming from — I’m just speculating.
And so, they went around to all the different agencies and they said, “Add up what you’re doing for Africa, let’s bundle it in, and off we go.” Cobus’s point is that it’s not new money, so it’s not news, who cares? One of the other points that I made in my discussion with you, and I’d like to get your take on it is because these are American priorities. These are U.S. priorities. This was not necessarily done in consultation with Africans. So, the focus is on climate and health. And the point that I made is that presidents and prime ministers don’t win elections on health and climate issues. They win elections on bringing money home for infrastructure, for jobs, and things that have a much more immediate turnaround. Which is one of the reasons why I think that people get more excited about the Chinese money than they do this $55 billion announcement from Jake Sullivan and the U.S. government. What’s your take?
Geraud: My take is that, as Cobus said, you also spoke about it, the fact that first of all, there was no breakdown of the numbers. So, we really don’t know how much about where’s going to go where. Second of all, as I say, since we don’t know where it’s going where, basically no country had a fixed number to say, “Out of the 50 billion, myself, I’m going to take 5 billion for infrastructure, 10 billion for this, anything.” Basically, there was no political gain for the delegation there to send the number back to the countries to be pushing on how much that trip to the U.S. was a victory for them — so they bring back money, they bring back investment — No, there was nothing for them to show for.
African media did not really had to share about that. To be fair, there was some coverage. There are basic, some coverage from different newspapers I’ve read here and there, but the difference was in the coverage was much more a kind of piggy bag of the news that’s coming from big agency; Reuters, [inaudible 0:12:03], everything. So, there were no really much of in-depth analysis or went on-
Eric: It was uninspired coverage. It was just kind of like pro forma, take the AP, Wire, copy, put it in. It was no excitement around it.
Cobus: And some of the coverage that I also saw was tending to focus on the domestic kind of connection to these things. I saw coverage, for example, in the Kenyan press; that the Kenyan president was trying to have a side deal made during his strip to get new investment in the national airline, for example. I think one of the reasons why the coverage was relatively muted was that the numbers tended to be… A, we don’t know a lot of details about the numbers yet. They haven’t really been broken down. But they also haven’t been broken down by country. As Geraud mentioned, there isn’t really a takeaway that a national leader and a national press score can bring back to a national audience for any specific country. It was all couched in terms of the entire sub-Saharan Africa or the entire continent. It’s a big continent, so any individual press scores, and well, there’s nothing really here for us specifically to cover.
Eric: Imagine, though, had they had it broken down by country, they could have generated in a lot more interest. No doubt.
Geraud: Of course. We even saw that on how government press corps, those who went with different president, they were much more vocal when there was like this meeting with Biden, to say this, this happened. They put a spin on the meeting — we talked about this and this, this happened. But they did not really talk about that 55 billion given to Africa. Because somehow the question was going to be, how much are we going to get off those 50 billion? And the third point I wanted to make is… It’s coming from the U.S. in terms of commitment.
Sometime people are like, since we don’t know if really it’s going to come up, we don’t want to be coming up with those big numbers and showing, and talking about that. And later on, nobody’s going to come to say, “Did we really get those 55 billion? And of course, there’s also the last point that you made is about how much sexy is the… Where the money is going to. We didn’t hear about big infrastructure projects, big this, big that, so at the end, people were like, it’s 55 billion. But people were not really excited about the fact that it’s going to create political gain for the leaders who went to the meeting for three days.
Cobus: I think there’s also the other really important factor is that some of that money is still dependent on congressional approval. I think that is one of the realities in dealing with the United States is that there are these pledges, but there’s political realities on the U.S. side. Particularly at the moment, there’s no guarantee necessarily that this congress will go for this kind of funding or that whatever happens in 2024 will also probably change those commitments.
Eric: But we actually don’t know how much is dependent on Congress. Some of it, or most of it could actually be already approved money that again, they’re just repackaging and putting forward down the line. Now, the administration has done its very best over the past six to nine months to try and separate their Africa policy from the word China. And it’s not an easy thing to do. And in part because for the past 20 years, and I remember this because back in Kinshasa, in 2009 or ’10, when Hillary Clinton came, and I was there, it was China, China, China, China. That’s all they’ve been talking about for 20 years. And now, in this year, they’ve said, “Okay, we don’t want to talk about China.”
Now, I want you to listen to this exchange at the press conference on Thursday at the end of the event between a reporter from ABC News and Secretary Blinken. And I want you to see how the question starts and how Blinken takes it.
Speaker 7: Thank you, Secretary Blinken. Through the course of the Summit, you have been very careful to make the case that the administration doesn’t want to force African nations to choose between the U.S. and China. But the Secretary of Defense clearly said that Beijing’s influence on the continent is a destabilizing threat. Do you share that assessment?
Secretary Blinken: Thank you. This summit is about one thing — Africa and the relationship between the United States and Africa. It’s about one region and only one region — Africa. It’s not about any other region; it’s not about any other country. And I think you heard that across the board this week. And I recognize people may want to turn it into something else, but sometimes the thing is just what it is. And this is the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. And fundamentally, it’s about what we are affirmatively able to bring to the table, some of which I described; the partnerships, the investments that are based on shared interests and shared values. And again, done in a way that’s transparent, that’s high quality, that’s sustainable, and with a focus on empowering local communities, respecting their needs, their decisions, their rights. That is what we’ve been talking about for the last three days.
And in doing that, we’re actually creating more opportunity, more opportunity for Africans, more opportunity for Americans. Now, if other countries have the ability and the will to do the same thing, that’s great. There’s more than enough need to go around. But from our perspective, to the extent that anyone else is engaged, we just want to make sure it’s a race to the top; not a race to the bottom. We want to make sure that when we’re seeing investments in Africa, they’re done to the highest standards. They’re not piling debt on countries. They’re not abusing workers or importing workers from outside. They respect the environment. They don’t bring corruption with them. If that’s the case, if we have these affirmative partnerships and investments, then it’s great for everyone to be involved. And ultimately, as I said, this is about choices that Africans will make, and our purpose is simply to make sure that they have a good choice. That’s what this is about.
Eric: Oh, Tony, Tony, Tony, you almost made it to the finish line. You almost made it to the finish line. And again, they have this positive affirmative view. This is not about China, but we don’t want countries, I’m not going to say which country it is, to pile on debt, to bring in workers, and to blah, blah, blah. The same things that they’ve been saying for years. Cobus, this presented a real dilemma for not only Secretary Blinken, but also Secretary Austin, the Defense Secretary; Linda Thomas-Greenfield, the UN Ambassador or the U.S. Ambassador to the UN. They kept getting asked these questions about China, and you wrote earlier this week about how they struggled mightily to respond to this, not only to try and say, “We don’t want to talk about China, but we’re going to tell you all the bad things about China.” But then when they did speak about China, it was tragically outdated and misinformed.
Cobus: Yeah, that was a little sad making that it just… Yeah, those old talking points, they have staying power. You can’t get them out of there no matter how hard you try.
Eric: They really do. I mean, they just kept coming back over and over again. And you should have seen some of the other things coming out of Congress. And I kept saying the China Global South Project subscription makes for a wonderful Christmas gift. And your boss would really benefit from the subscription. I tweeted that a couple times this week, and oh my. But Cobus, you said, as a whole, that despite everything that Secretary Blinken laid out, despite all of the ambitions of the White House, you and I know some of the people who worked very hard to put the Summit together. It was a break with the past. I mean, they didn’t call countries S-holes, they didn’t say that … Making up Nambia. They did a lot of things that were very encouraging, but at the end of the day, you were underwhelmed. That was the word you used. Why?
Cobus: Well, in that same piece, I said that the Summit refreshed the relationship and renewed the relationship, but didn’t revolutionize the relationship. And someone that we know in the administration said, “Well, hey, we weren’t aware that this was the brief. We needed to revolutionize the relationship.” The point is, is that what China has been doing over the last 20 years in Africa has been revolutionary. This is why we are busy here recording this podcast right now. It’s because what China did in Africa was to essentially change Africa’s position in the world and reshape what African development could look like and set a new set of talking points and agendas and standards for what a development could look like in Africa, good and bad.
In contrast, the U.S. Summit tended to lean into fields that the U.S. has already emphasized. So, democratization, health, for example — all very, very useful and all very valuable. But again, not necessarily breaking new ground. Also, I think it was very much shaped by what’s possible on the U.S. side, rather than, as we’ve seen in the last FOCAC, where there’s quite a lot of input from the African’s side about the development of new fields of the relationship. On the U.S. side, one got a feeling that the calculus was, and I mean this is just my looking from the outside, that the calculus was a lot of like what’s possible on outside — what can USAID and the DFC achieve together, for example, right?
Because we know that there are these really formidable agencies and mechanisms in the U.S. government and we also know that it’s incredibly complicated and frequently quite rigid. And that it’s difficult to make those institutions work together. So, finding ways to make them work together as they have is really encouraging. But it’s coming from a place where I think there are certain priorities, on the U.S. side, that need to be hit, and certain political realities that also need to be hit, which means that certain things are possible and other things are not possible. Some of the things that I think Africans would’ve been quite happy about, which are not politically possible, include things like dealing with fiduciary law on the U.S. side to make the impact of private sector lending, which is overwhelmingly located in the U.S. and the UK, to make it easier to deal with debt restructuring processes.
Because we know that private debt far outstretch of Chinese debt on the African continent and, as an issue in debt restructuring, has been very problematic. That, for example, or rapidly enlarging, greatly enlarging the number of African students going to the U.S., for example, or making it easier for Africans to immigrate to the U.S. All of those things are examples of these greenfield areas which could actually reshape the relationship with Africa, but those are politically tough on the U.S. side, so they were kind of off the table. That’s what I mean. It was a strengthening of a relationship that we already know rather than this kind of bridging into new areas.
Eric: What’s so interesting was that back in June, I went to a speech by Wendy Sherman, who is the number two at the State Department. And she came here to Ho Chi Minh City, and she went to Fulbright University, which is right down the street from me here in Saigon. So, I went to go listen to her. And she said, “The biggest priorities for the United States in Vietnam and Southeast Asia is climate and health.” And everybody in the audience looked at each other and was like, “Really, really? Okay. Let’s hear her out.” And she said climate is going to be the most important thing. And then healthcare — we’re going to deliver massive healthcare. And USAID, by the way, is very strong in delivering healthcare. The problem is, though, is that when you align the narratives of the United States on climate and health with China on economic development and infrastructure, there’s a mismatch there.
And Geraud, I’d like to get your take on this. The United States is literally the largest oil producer in the world. Not the largest fossil fuel producer, but the largest oil producer in the world. How does the world’s largest oil producer have credibility on climate? It is also the world’s second-largest emitter of carbon emissions. How does that reconcile? And then on healthcare, we have the largest uninsured population in the G7. We also have literally the world’s most expensive care provided. We are not a global leader on healthcare. And so, this is a problem in terms of a narrative. And it looks like they’ve got, as Cobus you pointed out, this global thing — climate and health — that’s our two things. What they should have been talking about is what the United States does so incredibly well — capital formation, entrepreneurship, business technology, finance, services, education. That’s where our strengths are. And instead, they’re talking about all these things that we’re actually not leaders in. To me, Geraud, that was part of the disconnect, I think.
Geraud: Yes, that was part of the disconnect. But to be fair, among the deals that they’ve signed or the commitment they’ve signed, there was a lot of those commitment and deals around those-
Eric: It was a lot of tech — a lot of tech.
Geraud: Yes, a lot of techs; a lot of small business enterprise; a lot of those financing. There was a lot of traction there. But the problem is, in that regard, is the fact that from an African perspective, the population people expect more from the government initiative, you see. So, when the U.S. is, for example, giving $1 billion that’s going to go through small enterprise, through what future funds to be boosting startups and everything, startups are going to see that. But from a larger perspective, from a general perspective, people will not feel it, will not see it as if it was a government-led project. If the government say, “I’m bringing that much money and I’m putting that from on the table, coming from the U.S.,” it’s going to speak louder than those small initiative where the U.S. is really present
credit to them, they go to places where you don’t see a lot of Chinese movement there, like in small business enterprise to future funds, to those kind of startups, business; they were there. They were at least showing that they’re willing to move on that field. But the problem is those field are not really visible from an African perspective where people, where you have bad infrastructure, you have bad public service and everything. So, people are expecting more from the public service, from the state, from the government than from the public sector. So, when startups are getting much more help from the U.S. or financing from the U.S., it won’t be seen and felt by the population. That’s why at the end, people are like, “Rh, we don’t really see much more what’s coming from there.” For me, it’s much more a prospective problem than a real issue on how the U.S. could have done it.
Of course, they could have been different if they had come up with, as I said earlier, with much more deals with the government on big things that much are visible to the people than those small kind of deal where it’s more private to private.
Cobus: In relation to the climate thing, I was also wondering whether it would’ve gotten more press traction if it were framed in terms of electrification, like green sustainable electrification rather than climate.
Eric: Well, they did talk a lot about electrification. I mean, they did. And they’ve talked about power Africa. It was framed in climate, but it was not necessarily framed entirely in connectivity.
Cobus: Because it would’ve then added this kind of like, well, we are bringing home this electrification initiative, which is always very, very popular in Africa, you know?
Geraud: Yes. In terms of climate, there was this comment made by president of DRC, President Tshisekedi in the Forum on Climate, because earlier this week, yes, two-three days ago, there was flood in Kinshasa, where you had 141 people who were dead, or who died during the floods. So, Tshisekedi made a comment on the U.S., made during a peak, if polluted country had… they stuck to the commitment to meet climate change, we wouldn’t have those kind of issue. We would be able to prevent those kind of issues. So, he had kind of those, so it was… Those kind of places, they were like a try for different presidents to make a plea on that to say, “You can do something on that.” But yes, even if it was climate, it would be much more visible in big things; energy and hydropower or solar. Those kind of projects.
Eric: Well, we were by no means alone in casting a more skeptical shadow over the proceedings that happened this week in Washington. The New York Times, their first write at the end of the Summit, here’s the headline, Biden Courts African Leaders, but Some Are Skeptical of Big Promises. I also want to play you some sound from Ian Bremmer, who is one of the most famous, most well-known commentators on international relations in the United States. He’s the Founder and President of the Eurasia Group, which is a geopolitical risk analysis company. And he, too, really wasn’t that enthused by what he saw.
Ian Bremmer: Dozens of African leaders in Washington, D.C., potentially the most stillborn summit the Americans have hosted since the Summit of the Americas, Latin America in LA, months ago because the United States doesn’t have much of a strategy. Certainly want to have more influence given how much the Chinese have been economically locking up so much of the political orientation of these countries, but that means money, and the Americans, this is, at the end of the day, not the top priority — not even close for the United States given GDP and given role in the world. So, I suspect it’s going to be a lot of happy talk. There’ll be some political alignment, but it’s not going to be a lot of influence.
Eric: Cobus, what’s your take on that? You, again, I think you share a little bit of what Bremmer is saying here that there was a lot of talk. Again, I think the U.S. tried to put some substance into it, but not a lot of coherence in the outcome of it. Aubrey Hruby, who’s a Senior Fellow at the Atlantic Council, she said one of the problems with what happened this week is that dozens of programs, billions of dollars were all introduced, but it’s all scattered all over the place. We don’t have a concept for what this is. It’s not like it was in the past with Prosper Africa, Power Africa, PEPFAR; these are brands. FOCAC for the Chinese. Everything gets piled into FOCAC and people can then get their heads around it. Here it’s 50, 60, 100 things that happened. We don’t all know what they were.
We’re going to transition to our conversation on the Chinese side of this, but before we go, what do you think of what Aubrey said and what do you think of what Ian Bremmer said?
Cobus: I see what she means. On the other hand, there’s always this kind of… You always fall both sides of this issue, because, on the other hand, we’ve also seen a flurry of new initiatives announced over the last two years; Global Gateway, the PGII, the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework. So, a lot of frameworks have been flowing around. And so, you have an announcement with a big name and then immediately a bunch of questions about what it’s going to mean, and what’s new, and so on. Or you don’t, and then everyone complains about that, right? So, it seems like one can’t really win.
Eric: Well, you win if you back up the name with substance.
Cobus: Yeah. But even in the case of FOCAC, FOCAC, as the Chinese frequently do, they put out a scheme, like an intellectual framework, and then it gets filled in later. Right?
Eric: That’s true.
Cobus: So, it seems coherent retroactively, but at the moment, everyone is still like, “What is this? As we see with the Global Development Initiative. Exactly. I’m always hesitant to dismiss these kind of summits as simply happy talk as Bremmer said, simply because, as Anthony Blinken said, there’s a lot of need to go around, right? There’s a lot of space in this area for different kind of different external actors to collaborate with Africa differently.
In that sense, I think it is useful that the U.S. found it necessary to have this summit; that they found it necessary to make this point about their relationship with Africa; that actually revivified the relationship because they could just simply not have. In that sense, I think it is useful, and I think this money coming an investment coming in, so great. To then move on to, even though the narrative is don’t choose sides, the larger logic is ‘please choose sides,’ right? It all comes down to some kind of narrative of competition even if individual officials are trying to avoid that narrative. In that respect, that’s less helpful. But also, once one puts it into that context, then it raises new questions. We talked about the 55 billion, which is impressive in any respect, but at the same time, it needs to be put into context that A, it includes a lot of historical funding as we said, but also that the U.S. is so far, up to November, has allocated 66 billion to the reconstruction in Ukraine.
And there’s another 37.7 billion waiting for congressional approval for Ukraine. So, that’s one country, right? And I mean, a particularly afflicted country, but still it’s one country. Africa is 54 countries. It’s 1.2 billion people. It’s, as everyone says, it’s the future with the world’s youngest population, etc. In that sense, as such, one has put into comparison, and then you’re back to the horse race is what I mean.
Eric: Yeah. And the folks in Washington will say that Ukraine is a primary geopolitical threat to the United States National Security. Africa — Mm. That’s why they can justify $100 billion in less than a year to go to Ukraine.
Cobus: But at the same time, they’re extremely upset around even possible rumors of a possible Chinese base in Equatorial Guinea, right? Which is immediately framed as a national security threat as well.
Geraud: What Cobus mentioned in terms of Ukraine, the comparison, it’s quite also interesting because let’s not forget how African countries voted on that war on Ukraine and everything, how it got people get a high brows in the U.S., in the west. Because the case in Ukraine, from an African perspective, would be like, first of all, the war in Ukraine, people were like, yeah, there was responsibility from different countries. It was geopolitical move and everything. And there, they sent 65 billion for the reconstruction. They’re going to build new stuff and everything. They’re going to build the country back. But us, somehow they come to us with the message, “Don’t pick up the Chinese, don’t choose the Chinese because their loan are difficult and everything.” But at the same time, the Chinese are giving us those money that we need for reconstruction, for building, and everything, for airport, for roads, for highways. At the end, when you sign our 55 billion, but you come give us to 54 countries — let’s not say 54 countries because only 49 were invited and five were excluded for different reasons.
So, you kind of are like, “Mm, 55 billion to divide and we don’t really clear where it’s going to go.” Yeah, people are not really going to get excited about it. So, that’s why the number, when you compare to Ukraine, you see that there is that, mm, if they’re willing to give 65 billion to Ukraine, and even add more to what’s happening there, so for us, coming to us and telling us, “We are going to give you those 1 billion here, maybe 500 million here, but in the same time, we would like you to be more cautious on what Chinese money you are taking or not,” people will be like, Nah, I’m not going to do that.”
Cobus: Yeah, and particularly in the context of the upcoming law, which I’m now blanking on the exact name of, but that would essentially penalize global south countries for dealing with Russia, right? In that context, in the Ukraine context, it isn’t only an issue of political pressure. It also then becomes a budget issue for these countries, a kind of a decision about what they’re getting from one side versus what they’re getting from the other side.
Eric: So, the Chinese had nothing positive to say all week about the summit. Global Times took the lead as it’s prone to do. Global Times is the Communist Party-run newspaper that is a tabloid — very sharp tongue, and it oftentimes plays the role of the Cynic-in-Chief in China. And so, all week they were running editorials, op-eds. They were running columns, news stories saying basically how this is all just another ruse to contain China. And what’s interesting Cobus is that you did a few media reviews this week as well looking at the Chinese press coverage and the Chinese social media coverage. And again, while we talk about how the United States, and especially the media in the United States is trying to frame this in terms of a geopolitical competition, that is the only way that the Chinese media and Chinese scholars frame the issue. They can’t see it in any other way. So, while we talk about the limitations of the discourse in the U.S., in many ways it feels even more crippled in China.
Cobus: Yes. And I think, in a lot of ways, we face the same thing, which is that only very small slivers of certain technocrats in Washington and Beijing are actually interested in Africa. The rest of the broad readership don’t particularly need, or feel they don’t need any kind of input on Africa at all and as they have very little interest in the continent. And so, therefore, in order to get any kind of interest at all, one needs to frame it in the press in Beijing and in Washington in relation to the competition. But as you said, it was very interesting to see how social media in China was almost completely silent on it, like, no one cared. And then the state media was foaming at the mouth, like super, super angry. It’s funny to see that contrast.
Eric: The only place we could find commentary on Weibo about the Summit was on the U.S. Embassy Weibo page. That was basically it. We looked high and low for other comments — it wasn’t there. But this question of the choice and not having African countries or other developing countries be forced to choose between the United States and China was a key theme of the conversations that took place both at the Summit and around the Summit in Washington. I’m going to give you two perspectives now, one from Secretary of State Blinken, and then we’re going to get Geraud’s favorite person, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda. Let’s first hear how Secretary Blinken laid out this issue of choice
Secretary Blinken: There’s no one model of good governance. There’s no one model for how to build strong institutions. I think we have to be informed by each other. We have to be informed by local conditions, local needs. And from the perspective of the United States, this is also not about a competition with others. This is not about saying to our friends and partners, “You have to choose.” This is about offering a genuine choice, offering a genuine partnership, and hopefully, together, building a race to the top; not a race to the bottom. That’s what we’re animated by.
We put out a Strategy for Sub-Saharan Africa a few months ago, and it really does bring together the three pieces that are represented here. Last thing I’ll say is this, it’s interesting, when you’re in the situation room, as you know very well, oftentimes the diplomats are saying, “Gosh, we could use a little bit more defense and security or a little bit more development.” And then the Secretary of Defense is saying, “We need some more diplomacy to deal with this.” So, we’re constantly playing off of each other, but it’s really increasingly, in response to what we’re hearing from our friends, from our colleagues, from our partners, that’s what’s animating us. That’s the only way I think we’re going to be successful in building this plane as our friends are flying at a 60,000 feet.
Speaker 8: Yes, thank you very much Secretary Blinken, and thank you very much for putting the emphasis on the quality of the partnership; the content of that partnership, the nature of that partnership, and what the United States is doing to build it with all of Africa.
Eric: Now, there are some hidden code words in there. The quality of the relationship is definitely loaded language, because again, they will talk about high quality infrastructure and they will talk about language that relates to the quality of the partnerships. And they, again, oftentimes use that to denigrate Russia, China, and people that they don’t like. This question was also posed to Rwandan President Paul Kagame, who spoke at a Semafor Conference, and he made a lot of news for lots of different reasons. We’re going to talk about a few of the issues, but let’s talk about this question of the choice.
President Paul Kagame: With the relationship between Rwanda or Africa and China, or Rwanda and Africa and the U.S., I think the most important thing is — I’ll speak for myself, or I’ll speak for Rwanda; I’m sure many Africans would have a lot to say — I don’t think we need to be bullied into taking or making choices; choosing between U.S. or China. It’s really none of our business. I think we need to have both and others as partners in as far as they also respect us and understand that we have something to contribute. There is a lot at stake for us. So, we can have something to say. We need to have something to say. Whatever is going on between China and the U.S., and then that being brought to Africa, is something we need to treat carefully ourselves.
Eric: We can always count on Paul Kagame to be direct and blunt — and there he was. Geraud, African leaders, like those in the Middle East and here in Southeast Asia, have been adamant in saying they don’t want any part of the U.S.-China conflict, and they don’t want to be forced to take sides. There is increasing evidence that the United States, as Cobus has indicated, is starting to become more coercive in terms of urging countries to take sides. This is a case that was made by Evan Feigenbaum at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who talked about… We featured some of his comments on an earlier show, and he says, “Watch what happens when you put Huawei into the cord of your 5G network, and you’ll start to see that choices will be made for you. So, what was your take on Blinken’s assessment and the whole theme of this is not a competition, and then on what Paul Kagame said?
Geraud: On the Blinken comment, my take was, it was really interesting to see the language of it first, because the rhetoric was, for me it was, on the form, it was more humble, I’d like to admit, to say that there’s no one model. Because that has been one of the core element that many African leaders, or we’ve been saying with the West when we talk about democracy and everything. And the fact they say there’s no one model, it also echoes to what China’s been saying in Africa when it comes to the governance and stability and political and democracy, to say there’s no one model that fits all. China’s been pushing that narrative by saying, “We cannot force one country to choose the kind of governance, the kind of political stability it wants to build.”
When Blinken says that, I was like, whoa. He kind of use the Chinese language in terms of there’s no one model. We are not going to push you in terms of choosing the kind of political model, the kind of political institution you want to build to create that stability. But in the same time down the line, you can say, “But we’d like to make a race on the top.” I’m giving you, on one hand, but I’m going to be holding, on the other hand. So, it tells you a lot, at least on the way it presented it, that we are trying in a way to present it, that we don’t want you put in a situation where you have to choose. That’s, for me, what the Blinken comment told me is like, okay, but African leaders can just decide just to pick up on the first part, even Chinese, yeah, Blinken said it himself, “There’s no one model.
So, we have to be more aware of the local content, local situation; local context to say, “Okay, they chose that path. That statement itself can become problematic down the line years later, even months later. Because Blinken himself said, “There’s no one model.” But on the other part of like say, we don’t want you to choose, and the comment that Kagame said, “Yes, many African don’t want to choose. They don’t want to put in situation where… They don’t want to choose. They don’t want to be forced on choosing China and the U.S. and everything.” But on that side as well, there is a kind of, I’d say hypocrisy in the way African leaders relate to the U.S. to the matter of their own internal politics. And when you mention Kagame’s comment, Kagame is making good point, but when I now put it in the context where Kagame is talking about, we don’t want to be choosing, we want to be able to make our own decision.
At the same time, himself, in Africa, he’s making a move that’s endangering other countries, endangering the cohesion of a country like the DRC’s political stability, in the DRC. In that context, when we know how those two countries, for example, DRC and Rwanda are related to the U.S. when it comes to their own political stability, you kind of have that position where those two countries, when they go to the U.S., they don’t want to be forced to choose, but they know when it comes to their internal own political power and stability, they know they won’t go to China because China will not be the becoming the peacemakers and the peace broker. No, they will go to the U.S., and the U.S. will have something to say on how to do, where to go, on what kind of move to do. It’s really created a question of cohesion and coherence in their policy toward the U.S. and how they relate to U.S. and China.
With China, they know money, infrastructure, all of that. But when it comes to other issue, much more pressing, political stability and peace in the region, they know that the U.S. and the West are the only ones that can become the main actors. They’re really the ones putting the food on the plate and take the lead on the discussion. For me, it’s really a weird relationship, like, don’t know how to assume, really to take responsibility of it. So, if we don’t want to choose, let’s be responsible on how we deal with those issue until the end.
Cobus: I so agree. What I find incredibly frustrating about this, like, we don’t want people to choose, like we don’t want to be forced to choose. It’s one of those talking points that allow people to actually bypass the actual issue, right? Which is, what do African governments actually want? The way that it’s always being couched in terms of forced choices, then leaves African government’s own intentions off the table. And frequently, those intentions are not stated. They’re studiedly ambiguous in order to kind of maximize political maneuverability for African leaders at home. And part of what then comes in, there’s this kind of fantasy that runs through both the U.S. and China’s engagement with Africa, which is this fantasy that what African leaders actually want is African development, which I think is really, really up for question.
I think, in a lot of cases, African development is quite lower on list of priorities, below political feasibility at home. And so, you have a situation, like in South Africa, for example, where at the moment, electricity problems are off the charts. The country is falling apart. The electricity grid is falling apart. It’s taking the country’s economy with it. The CEO of the parastatal, electricity company has just resigned, like, seemingly undermined and forced out — who knows what’s going on in there. But all of the calculations in the government doesn’t have to do with the developmental impact or how to… like a green transition, blah, blah, blah. All of this has to do with what’s politically feasible and what’s politically… political machinations within the party. And who was covering who and who; who lost political influence and therefore they couldn’t protect this guy, etc.
It’s a lot of those internal wranglings in which both development, and electrification, and green transition, and so on are important, but they’re parked to the side, right? And that I think is true for many African governments. And this kind of like, “Oh, but they’re going to be forced to choose sides,” that whole narrative is there essentially to cover these leaders to ever have to articulate what they actually want to achieve. Sorry for the runt.
Eric: We’re running out of time. We’re trying to get this done in under an hour. We’ve got two other key points. The questions of debt came up quite a bit, again, on the sidelines of the Summit, not in the summit itself, specifically Chinese debt. This was brought up again to Paul Kagame. Paul Kagame has been very outspoken on this issue for a number of years and pushing back on many of the U.S. narratives. Again, he was at the Semafor Conference, and Steve Clemons, the host who, lord have mercy, if anybody needs a subscription to what we do, Steve Clemons definitely does. I mean, it’s painful to watch some of this stuff. Honestly, it’s…
He interviewed Qin Gang, the ambassador, and it was a great opportunity to interview the ambassador, but you’ll hear him talk about this; that he said, “This little birdie told me that Qin Gang is going to be the next foreign minister.” It’s not a little birdie; your sources aren’t that great. Everybody’s talking about the fact that Qin Gang is going to be the ambassador. But anyway, it was painful for us to watch Steve Clemons. But other than that, the more interesting comments came from Kagame himself. Let’s take a listen to his conversation with Steve Clemons.
Steve Clemons: On Monday, I interviewed Qin Gang, the ambassador of China to the United States, and my intelligence services tell me, my Steve Clemons intelligence, that there’s a good chance he’ll be named foreign minister of China shortly. He said he would go if he was in such a position potentially to Africa; that Africa’s the bedrock of Chinese foreign policy. I asked him about the Chinese debt trap, the so-called debt trap. And he said there is no debt trap. I think I’m paraphrasing their sort of debt opportunities or their financial opportunities, but is there a Chinese that when you look around other states in Africa, maybe with Rwanda, are there problems, even geopolitical problems in the financing and trade and economic relationship with China that we should be aware of?
President Paul Kagame: Well, if there is any debt trap with any country and China, I think we should blame it on both sides. Because if you keep being drawn into a debt that you are not sure how you’re going to pay, to repay the debt, then you also have a problem as the one who keeps giving you money. But for them, those ones who keep giving you money and knowing that you won’t to be able to pay, maybe for them it’s a plan. In the end, they own everything about you. So, that’s a problem.
Eric: God, I mean, we’re never going to get away from this. And by the way, next week, coming up on our China Global South Podcast, we are literally going to be doing the mic drop on the China debt trap issue. We’re going to have a conversation with two researchers who looked into the debt in Sri Lanka, specifically rated to Hambantota. And what they say was it was the private bonds, the private creditors. That’s the problem. And in Africa, that is the issue. Cobus, you and I know all too well that BlackRock right now is a major stumbling block in Zambia’s reconstruction, and at the same time that Chinese debt accounts for less than 20% of Africa’s total debt and a share that’s going down given the fact that private creditor and multilateral is going up — and the fact that Chinese debt is concentrated in about five to 10 countries at most in terms of the bulk of it.
So, it’s just a poorly informed question and it’s just annoying that you’re not looking at the broader issue of debt that also has complicity from the United States and Western countries, who again, have the governing laws that they can loosen up in order to do something, as you’ve talked about, with the fiduciary laws in the UK and the U.S. So just ugh.
Cobus: Well, exactly. It’s just so maddening. Because the conversation is shaped in this way where the role of Western held private debt is just never discussed. And I recently saw charts, which is just like, it’s beyond double of China’s total lending to the continent. It far outstrips any other form of financing on the continent.
Eric: With higher interest rates too, by the way.
Cobus: Exactly. It’s like Chinese lending is problematic in lots of ways, but it’s still concessional lending.
Eric: Not all of it, but a lot of it.
Cobus: Not all of it, but a lot of it is still below market rates, whereas the bond debt is commercial lending. It’s at market rates or higher.
Geraud: But guys, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, on that issue, when it comes to respond to on that issue, even African head of states, they never bring up those kind of argument. We are the ones bringing those argument. They don’t themself do not bring those argument in perspective. When even a Ethiopia ambassador in China was asked that question a few months ago, he did not bring up this question. Kagame did not bring up this argument. So, it’s kind of like, even from an African perspective, when they ask them the question, when they… It’s really easy to just break down the question and say, “No, that’s not the fact. The facts are here and there. We have to take into account those element, and you have to put it in perspective.” We are the ones to put that in perspective. From an African, you’re like, “Guys, why aren’t you putting those question in perspective yourself? When you ask those questions, why aren’t you saying that, “Guys, you should be putting this, take this into account, those elements into account.” To say that the way you’re presenting the question, the way you’re framing it, it doesn’t really reflect the reality on the ground.
Eric: And let’s go back to the key point that Wu Peng, China’s top diplomat for Sub-Saharan Africa made, oh God, I think it was back in April, when he said, “Nobody put a gun to any African leader’s head to borrow money from China.” So, that accountability question that Paul Kagame brings up, I think is very important. That, at the end of the day, it’s African leaders who are accountable for the decisions that they’ve made to take on this debt. This was not forced on anybody. And I think that’s overlooked in all of this. Again, the point here is to almost infantilize Africans that they are somehow victimized by the Chinese.
Cobus: But also to not make the broader point that the entire financing system facing the global south is wonky. It’s like there are very, very few options open to these countries. They are priced out of most of them. Their risk profiles are really distorted. And so, they have very few options. And in that landscape, lending from China is frequently the best option because the other option is, again, market lending, which is essentially like going to a payday lender. You’re never getting out of that debt. And that all in relation to the upcoming challenges of climate change. It’s like mitigation, adaptation, like, how are they going to pay for that? It’s like ugh.
Eric: Okay. Let’s close our discussion on one issue that seemed to rankle quite a few people, and it’s on the question of President Biden and the fact that he did not hold bilateral meetings. This came from Peter Pham, who is very well known in the Africa circles. He’s a Distinguished Fellow at the Atlantic Council. He’s also a former ambassador to the Great Lakes, I think it was, in the Sahel. He’s very conservative. He was a Trump administration appointee. Very hawkish towards China too. One of the most outspoken anti-China folks in the beltway regarding Africa. But he wrote on Twitter, “Kudos to Secretary Blinken for the marathon pace he has maintained at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit. But African presidents must be wondering where the U.S. president is. At their summits with China or Russia, they get full-fledged bilateral meetings with their presidential counterparts.
And he included a photo of a meeting that Blinken was having with African leaders and then a bilateral meeting that Putin had with African leaders. This also came up at the press conference with Jake Sullivan that we started the show with back on Monday when a journalist asked him saying, and the audio quality’s not great, but you can hear the tone from the journalist saying, “Listen, a lot of folks came from very far away and are spending a lot of money, and why aren’t they getting face time, one-on-one with the president?”
Speaker 9: Thank you, Jake. I went around yesterday to see how much African leaders were paying for the hotel for this trip, and I realized that some of the hotels in D.C. were charging them up to $22,000 a night. So, it’s an expensive trip. Some of them, they spent $50 million for countries where people live on less than a U.S. dollar a day. And so, my question is, if they have to spend all this money and travel thousands of miles, why wasn’t the White House, why didn’t the White House plan one-on-one meeting with those African leaders?
Jake Sullivan: Well, first, the president will have the chance to greet every single African leader and engage with them as they come for the dinner tomorrow night. Second, if you look at the substance of this Summit, the sessions that he is going to sit with those leaders around the table and deal with, it is the things that they have asked to talk about that he will be talking about with them. And those leaders will have the opportunity to speak in those sessions to President Biden and to one another so that we can collectively come up with a common strategy to deliver for the people of Africa. And if you look at what substance this Summit is going to deliver from the business forum, all the way through to the leader sessions, I believe that it is going to be three days where you will see put on display real tangible deliverables and results that are going to improve people’s lives. And ultimately, as I said before, I will ask you, judge us on the record of how that ends up playing out, but I’m confident that it is going to play out well. Yes.
Speaker 9: Jake, my final question…
Eric: Sullivan had to avoid the question. It is a sticking point. It is really the sharpest contrast, in many respects, between how the Chinese do diplomacy and how the United States does it. Because one of the hallmarks of Chinese diplomacy is that when it’s the Chinese foreign minister, Wang Yi or with Xi Jinping is they do these lightning rounds speed dating-style one-on-one. Basically, they make them wait in a corridor, you get your five minutes with the President, you get your photo, next. Five minutes, photo, next. But you get that sense of personal diplomacy. And I think this really was a tactical mistake of the United States. They don’t really do this very well. The United States does this diplomacy great with France, the United Kingdom, with Canada. You see the pictures in the Oval Office shaking hands, everything’s great. And from time to time, they did it with Ramaphosa.
But Geraud, holy crap, if people are spending 50 million bucks to come on a trip for three days, that isn’t America’s problem. I mean, like, Christ. And this is part of the problem, though, is that you saw the huge entourages that they brought with them to this Summit. And they spent… African leaders and ministers like to live large. There’s no doubt about it. I don’t know. I think that’s part of the problem too. But let’s do this one-on-one thing and then we’re going to walk out of here.
Geraud: My take on this, I’m going to go first from the question itself. Personally, I don’t think that because the president spent 15 million to come to the U.S., that’s rewarding a right to have a face-to-face. For me, that’s not the point. And second of all, still on the cost of the trip, my friend, you know that you’re coming to the U.S., you know that you haven’t prepared big deals to sign for you, for your country to come, why are you bringing entourage of 20, 25 people, 30 people with you to spend that much money on a trip that basically will not bring you a high political or even economic return to your country? That’s pointless for me. It doesn’t make sense. But the part of personal diplomacy, it’s really important for African leaders. And what that you mentioned, it’s really… That speaks a lot in Africa to say, when they say Biden, and Biden-Sarcozi or Biden-Merkel, those kind of face-to-face, it speaks to the importance, even if five minutes, 10 minutes, it speaks a lot in terms of how important is my country to the U.S.
Because when my head of state go to the U.S. and meets by on the face to face, it’s really for the president himself, when he comes back, he’ll really want to show that our country is important to the U.S. to the point that we are able to get a face-to-face with Joe Biden and really talk about this issue that’s related to our country and our interest.
Eric: And that’s how your president tried to spin it. Talk to us about the tweet that Tshisekedi posted with his photo with Biden.
Geraud: Exactly. The Tshisekedi communication team trying to put a spin on the multilateral meeting that Biden had with six African head of state because those countries are going to have election next year. So, he had a meeting with six head of States. And each of them had an opportunity to take a picture with Joe Biden one to one. So, the communication team in Tshisekedi, they spin it to say he had a brief meeting with Joe Biden before the multilateral meeting came after that. There was still that willingness to spin it in a way that we want to show you that we had a one-on-one with Biden, even though we know that there was no bilateral meeting on that, but they tried. Because for them, it’s very much important to show that we matter to the U.S. that’s why we had that one-on-one meeting.
And before finishing, let me get back to one of the answer that answered the journalists, the fact that Biden had a multilateral meeting with different head of states when they were talking about different issue, and they can address those issue collectively. The problem is many African countries, especially in the case of DRC, they were coming hoping to address with Biden the issue of, for example, the problem they had with another country like Rwanda, for instance. So, those kind of issue, you cannot expect a head of state coming to have a one-on-one to solve those issue, to expect that issue is going to be discussed collectively where you have all the other 49 out of state. No, they want to have a privilege, a moment with you so they can address those kind of issues.
The approach of saying that we are going to talk about those issues collectively, it’s as if those, all African countries who came there, they had the same issue and they had the same perspective on how to solve the issue. It’s like just ignoring the fact that some of them, they have different issue than fighting against each other. So yeah, that was not really smart move and smart answer, I think.
Cobus: I mean, I completely agree. I guess in defense of the organizers of the Summit, a lot of the U.S.’s approach there is looking at cross-cutting problems, right? Like looking at common problems and trying to identify common problems that they could then effectively address. And so, in that sense, the entire vibe of the conference was one of kind of collective cooperation. On the one hand, I definitely see the political optics and the convenience of having the kind of one-on-one photo op. But I mean, with Xi, one knows that all of the deals and so on are prepared beforehand, and that literally is just a five-minute exchange of pleasantries, and then that leader is moved along, right? So, it really is all about the optics.
Eric: But optics matter in politics. I mean, to say that it doesn’t matter is just naive.
Cobus: Optics matter, but at the same time, but again, it’s like… Optics matter, but all of the actual problems, I think, should matter more. But that’s not necessarily how it works.
Eric: We’re over time already. We’ve covered a lot of ground. We zigzagged a lot more than I had hoped we were going to zig-zag. But it’s just the nature of what this thing is. It’s a hydra-headed beast where it went in so many different directions. There were so many different themes. Again, it was a mix of really exciting initiatives. I mean, to see Africa getting this much attention is also really important. And don’t take it for granted that there’s not a big groundswell of support inside the beltway for Africa. This was noted by a number of scholars who say, “What we need to do is we need to generate more interest to wider swaths of American society in order to get more interest into African policy.” We should never take this for granted. That being said, there were a lot of shortcomings to it. It was problematic in a number of different ways. I think it fell short on their communications and their tactical communications as well. But before we go, let’s get a final reflection from the both of you about the Summit, and whether or not this question of the competition with China is germane. Geraud, we’ll start with you, and Cobus, we’ll give you the last word.
Geraud: For me, it was very, as you said, it was really interesting meeting, and it was a near-fault of the U.S. to remain relevant in Africa and at least still trying to counter the China-Russia narrative on the continent. I wrote a piece on that in French. I hope people are going to read it. I’m going to feature it on the newsletter today that the issue that speaks about how China and Russia dominated the narrative also speaks about how much African, we’re not able to shape the agenda of the meeting. It’s really important for African countries to be able now to put forth, in those meetings what their agenda is, what they want, what they expect, to be really communicating a lot about that so they, at the end, they don’t just… they feel and they just receive everything that’s coming to them.
They need to be able to shape the narrative and to put it forward, to put their own interest. So, in the next meeting, we may have different kind of topic to talk about. And talking about the next meeting, it’s also one of the issue I raised in the column I wrote this week is the fact that we need to have much more consistency from the U.S. in those U.S.-Africa meeting. Do we have a day? Do we have a commitment that we’re going to have another U.S.-Africa meeting in the next three years, in next five years? Without that, it’s just going to be one of those meeting that comes and go. And we don’t really have that much more to that. So, the U.S. needs to become more consistent in a way of approaching U.S.-Africa relation. And Africa needs to become much more vocal on the interest and the topic they want to raise and to talk about, and to be able to shape the agenda, not only with the U.S. but also in those FOCAC and the other meetings as well.
Eric: No commitment on the next meeting, but there is a hint, or maybe a promise, I think they promised that Biden is going to go to Africa next year. So, that’ll be his first trip as president to Africa. Cobus, you get the last word.
Cobus: I think in lots of ways, the U.S.-China competition is very convenient for global south countries. No one demonstrated that more effectively than the Solomon Islands, right? Like ignored for decades; the moment there’s engagement with China, 200 American diplomats show up, right? You can wield the competition between China and the U.S. to your needs, to your national needs as long as these global south countries in Africa particularly have clear ideas about what they want and what they want to achieve. And that I think has been a real disappointment I think in Africa. If one compares the situation of Africa to the small island developing states in the South Pacific, who they’ve really been shaping the discussion around climate issues, for example, particularly at COP27 in November, where they essentially reshape the global discussion about North-South climate relations, right?
I mean, these are tiny, tiny countries. Africa is much bigger, much richer, much more dynamic, many, many more people. And I think Africa has really been falling down in terms of its thought leadership. The thing is everything is couched in terms of like, what are we going to get from X? How are these kind of powerful superpowers going to impinge on our freedom or make us force to choose things or how are they going to be acting in our territory? Whereas the question should… What we know from looking at regions like ASEAN is once that train is moving, once that region starts trading with itself and starts setting its own agendas and start moving in its own developmental direction, then everyone is scrambling to get on board.
Whereas in Africa, everyone is still so happy to culture relationship in terms of this active global north, passive global south, where Africa isn’t setting its own agendas. They’re just not. I think that is really the core problem. Once they move forward in that direction, then it changes everything else.
Eric: Okay. That is a somber, depressing, downtrodden note, but then you’re South African, Cobus. And given the week that you’ve had in South Africa with no power and then all… I mean, that’s what you guys do these days, I guess.
Cobus: That’s our vibe.
Eric: Listen, thank you both for the insights. Let’s start first with Geraud. Geraud, we want to make sure that everybody knows about the great work that you are doing at Projet Afrique Chine. It’s our francophone service. Tell everybody how they can sign up for your free newsletter and follow you on Twitter.
Geraud: So, guys can follow us on Twitter @christiangeraud, that’s my personal account, but you also can follow us on AfrikChine. Afrik with a K. So, you’re going to be updated on all the news that we are covering. So, this week we made a large coverage of the U.S.-Africa Summit, giving the Chinese spin; what’s happening there. It’s all in French. If you want to receive our newsletter, you come on the website, projetafriquechine.com. You’re just going to register update. You don’t have to file any form. You don’t fill any form. Just come and write down your email on the top and you’re going to be receiving twice a week, every Tuesday, every Friday, our free newsletter covering different topic that we’re covering in the China-Africa Project. So, yes, that’s really a way to keep you updated on everything that’s happening within China and Africa in French. And yes, that’s it.
Eric: And also, Geraud is the host of a fantastic podcast, AfrikChine as well. Sign up for that anywhere you get your podcast. Don’t miss it. He’s interviewing some fantastic guests. And again, the discourse in the francophone world is sorely, sorely needed. And so, the work that Geraud is doing is so important. And for those of you who speak Arabic, Nesrine Kamal, our Arabic editor is doing everything the same. So, you can sign up for her free newsletter and also her podcast, and you can go check out her site. Just follow the links on our homepage at chinaglobalsouth.com. Also, we would love for you to follow the work that Cobus, myself, and the rest of the team are doing in our English service. Every day we’re putting together just a thorough, deep, deep, deep dive into everything that China’s doing throughout the global south.
This week, it focused a lot on the events in Washington, but we also covered the dramatic events that unfolded on the Sino-Indian border last week and the follow-up reaction to that. Again, very worrisome clashes that are taking place there — and the attack on the hotel in Kabul where a number of Chinese expatriates were staying as well. So, those are the kinds of things that we do to really save the time for you to have to look for all these things. Cobus, myself, and the team go out and curate that and put analysis every single day. Sign up at chinaglobalsouth.com/subscribe. By the way, we’re going to be increasing the rates next year just a little bit. So, try to sign up before the end of the year to capture the $7 a month for students and teachers, or $15 a month for everybody else. We’ll leave the show there. For Cobus van Staden in Johannesburg — I’m Erica Olander, until next week, thank you so much for listening.
Outro: The discussion continues online. Tag us on Twitter @ChinaGSProject and visit us at chinaglobalsouth.com. If you speak French, check out our full coverage at projetafriquechine.com and AfrikChine on Twitter. That’s Afrik with a K. And you’ll also find links to our sites and social media channels in Arabic.
