WASHINGTON, Dec 14 (AFP) - President Joe Biden has stressed a need for balanced partnerships with African nations, as the United States seeks to build stronger relations and increase trade with countries across the continent.
During an address at an opening trade forum at the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington on Wednesday, Biden said the talks were about “building connections” as well as a “shared future” for the US and Africa.
“We’ve known for a long time that Africa’s success and prosperity is essential to ensuring a better future for all of us,” Biden told the crowd of political and business leaders.
He emphasised that partnerships should be on equal footing, “not to create political obligation or foster dependence but to spur shared success”.
“When Africa succeeds, the United States succeeds. Quite frankly, the whole world succeeds, as well,” he said.
Delegates from 49 African countries, as well as the African Union, were invited to the three-day summit in the US capital, a follow-up to the first such gathering eight years ago under President Barack Obama.
The talks come amid Biden’s efforts to rebuild US relationships abroad, after four years of the “America First” foreign policy under his predecessor Donald Trump.
Washington’s competition with Beijing, which has invested in Africa in recent years at a level that has far outpaced the US, has loomed in the backdrop of this week’s discussions.
But Biden administration officials have sought to downplay that factor in its push to boost ties to African countries, instead stressing that the summit “is rooted in the recognition that Africa is a key geopolitical player”.
The talks nevertheless elicited a response from China, as foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said on Wednesday that the US should “respect the will of the African people and take concrete actions to help Africa’s development, instead of unremittingly smearing and attacking other countries”.
Wang said during a briefing that it is the “common responsibility of the international community to support Africa’s development”, adding that “Africa is not an arena for great power confrontation or a target for arbitrary pressure by certain countries or individuals”.
Al Jazeera’s Kimberly Halkett, reporting from the White House on Wednesday afternoon, said the US is concerned “about the influence that China, as well as Russia, has been able to make [in Africa] in recent years, particularly under the previous administration of Donald Trump”.
Biden also is doing “damage control”, Halkett reported, after Trump referred to African nations as “s**thole countries” during his time in office, sparking international outrage. “There’s some repairing that needs to be done in these relationships,” she said.
