US Vice President Kamala Harris will begin a three-nation tour of Africa this weekend, promoting the White House’s positive vision of the continent as “the future of the world”.
Harris’ trip to Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia is the latest salvo in deepening US engagement with a continent largely ignored by Republican Donald Trump – and long viewed in Washington as more of a problem area than a land of opportunity.
African innovation
“We want to dismantle long-held and often outdated understandings of what it means to live, work and invest in Africa,” a senior US official told reporters, speaking on condition of anonymity.
Harris “believes that African innovation and ideas will shape the future of the world,” the official said.
The tour is also part of Washington’s pushback against growing Chinese and Russian involvement in the resource-rich continent, with US officials expressing what they say is a more positive US message.
Also read: US Vice President Kamala Harris visits Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia to push for African links
“It’s no secret that we are in competition with China clearly, to compete (with) China in the long term,” a senior US official said. Speaking of “real concerns” about China’s use of loans to control Africa’s weak economies, the official stressed that the United States was not trying to copy Beijing’s methods.
“Our relationship with Africa cannot and should not be defined by competition with China,” he said, citing an “affirmative agenda in Africa” that relies on public-private partnerships and transparency.
– Personal history
Prior to Harris, who landed Sunday in Ghana for his first stop, he had been on a trip to Africa by five of President Joe Biden’s cabinet secretaries and First Lady Jill Biden.
The vice president’s trip, which will take him to Tanzania on Wednesday, then Zambia on Friday, has a special flavor. She was the first black man and woman to work in the second White House and she visited Zambia when she was young, when her grandfather, originally from India, worked there.
The trip will also help him burnish his foreign policy credentials ahead of what could be Biden’s run for a second term — with him once again at his side.
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Harris will meet with President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana, President Samia Hassan of Tanzania and President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia.
Topics will include debt relief, democracy, economic growth, food security, and the impact of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
Senior officials said the Biden administration recognizes Africa’s “strategic importance” in global issues including climate change, supply chain resilience and also as a player at the United Nations.
The overall focus for Harris on the trip is the youth of this fast-growing continent, where the average age is just 19 and where approximately one in four people in the world will be alive by 2050.
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Highlights will include a “main speech” for young people in Ghana and a visit to Cape Coast Castle, once a slave trading hub. Further stops will include meetings with tech entrepreneurs, digital sector leaders, and groups promoting women in the economy.
In a reminder of the deep-rooted — and ongoing — unrest involving extremist Islamic groups, Harris will lay a wreath to commemorate the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.
Also read: US official’s Africa tour a ‘bid to counter Chinese influence’