Africa no longer subject of geopolitics but major geopolitical player- US Secretary of State

…vows cleaner business deals with Africa

The United States said it now believes that it is time to stop treating Africa as a subject of geopolitics and start treating the continent as the major geopolitical player it has become in the scheme of things in the global arena.

The visiting US Secretary Antony Blinken, who was on a two-day official visit to Nigeria, stated this on Friday when he addressed members of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) in Abuja.

The United States will do things differently in helping Africa build infrastructure needs, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said, adding that too often big international deals were opaque and coercive.

“The United States firmly believes that it’s time to stop treating Africa as a subject of geopolitics – and start treating it as the major geopolitical player it has become. The facts speak for themselves,” Blinken said, adding “This is a continent of young people – energized, innovative, and hungry for jobs and opportunity.”

 He said by 2025, more than half the population of Africa will be under age 25 and that the year 2050, one in four people on earth will be African, while Nigeria will surpass the US as the third most populous country in the world.

 Blinken said that “Africa is poised to become one of the world’s most important economic regions.  When the 54-country African Continental Free Trade Area is fully implemented, it will comprise the fifth-largest economic bloc in the world, representing a huge source of jobs, consumers, innovation, and power to shape the global economy.”

 He also said, as the global community works to end the COVID-19 pandemic and strengthen global health security, “we must work closely with the countries of Africa to build public health systems here that can prevent, detect, and respond to future emergencies – because as these past two years have taught us, none of us are completely protected unless all of us are protected.”

“As the urgency of the climate crisis grows, our focus will increasingly be on Africa – to solve an emergency that threatens our collective security, our economies, and our health.  Here, where the potential for renewable energy is greater than anywhere else on the planet, we see not only the stakes of this crisis but also – also its solutions.

“At this moment of testing for democracy around the world, we see across Africa a microcosm of what democracies can achieve – as well as the challenges that they must overcome. And as we debate how to govern the use of technologies to ensure they strengthen democracies – not undermine them – the choices that governments, industries, and innovators make here will affect people’s rights and freedoms everywhere for a long time to come.”

For all these reasons and more, said the US Secretary of State, “I believe Africa will shape the future – and not just the future of the African people but of the world. That’s why I’m here this week, visiting three countries that are democracies, engines of economic growth, climate leaders, and drivers of innovation.

“We’ve just come from Kenya, where we announced a new initiative to help more people get vaccinated against COVID-19; committed for the first time to join negotiations on a global agreement to combat ocean plastic pollution; and launched a project with National Geographic to empower young people across Africa fighting against the climate crisis.

He said he was in Africa to address five areas of common interest: global health, the climate crisis, inclusive economic growth, democracy, and peace and security. First, we must end the COVID-19 pandemic and “build back better” before the next global health emergency.

The United States is “making good on our commitment to provide COVID vaccines to the world.This week, we hit a new milestone: 250 million doses delivered worldwide.  By next spring, that number will be well over 1 billion donated doses.

“We’ve also announced that we’ll significantly ramp up our vaccine manufacturing capacity, to meet global need.

“We’ve provided more than 50 million doses to 43 African countries, and more are on the way – all of this – all of this with no political strings attached.

We’ve given more than $1.9 billion in COVID-related assistance, for urgent needs like emergency food and other humanitarian support. And the new public-private partnership, the Global COVID Corps, will connect American businesses with countries that need logistical help with the so-called “last mile” – turning vaccine doses into actual shots in arms.

Kenya will be the first country to partner with the Global COVID Corps, and we plan for it to be the first of many.

“We’re following the lead of the African Union.  When the numbers of vaccines coming to Africa didn’t come close to meeting the need, the African Union stepped forward. 

“It made a plan to buy and distribute doses – and the United States supported it. We’re also supporting countries like South Africa and Senegal in their work to manufacture vaccines themselves, and we want to invest more in efforts like these, because increasing vaccine production in Africa makes it easier to distribute them, which saves lives.

“Likewise, the Africa CDC has been a vital partner throughout the pandemic.  And we hope other regions will see the success of the Africa CDC and create their own centres for disease control, because a global network of regional CDCs would put the world on stronger footing for the future. This pandemic has revealed how vulnerable all of us are. 

“We have to seize the opportunity to strengthen global health security.  On this, the United States and the countries of Africa are uniquely well-positioned to lead, because we’ve spent decades working together to improve health across the continent.