JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
The United States sees Africa’s 54 nations as “equal partners” in tackling global problems, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in South Africa Monday.
“Our strategy is rooted in the
recognition that sub-Saharan Africa is a major geopolitical force — one that
has shaped our past, is shaping our present, and will shape our future,” Blinken
said at the University of Pretoria in a speech detailing the Biden
administration’s policies for Africa.
“It’s a strategy that reflects
the region’s complexity, its diversity, its agency; and one that focuses on
what we will do with African nations and peoples, not for African nations and
peoples,” he said.
Blinken said that the United
States and African nations “can’t achieve any of our shared priorities —
whether that’s recovering from the pandemic; creating broad-based economic
opportunities; addressing the climate crisis; expanding energy access; revitalizing
democracies; or strengthening the free and open international order — if we
don’t work together, as equal partners.”
South African academics and
students responded warmly to Blinken’s speech, which was a broad declaration of
U.S. intentions toward sub-Saharan Africa. The United States is often faulted
for overlooking the continent in recent decades, opening space for Russian and
Chinese interests to make significant inroads.
The United States’ top
diplomat is in South Africa as part of a three-nation tour of Africa including
Congo and Rwanda in what is seen as a contest between Western nations and
Russia to win support from African countries over the war in Ukraine.
Blinken’s tour follows recent
trips to African countries by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and French
President Emmanuel Macron.
South Africa is among many
African countries that have taken a neutral stance on the Ukraine war.
Before his speech, Blinken met
in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital, with Minister of International
Relations Naledi Pandor. Pandor appears to have maintained her country’s
refusal to criticize Russia for its invasion of Ukraine. Instead, in a press
briefing following the meeting, Pandor criticized the U.S. and other Western
powers for focusing on the Ukraine conflict to the detriment of other
international issues.
“We should be equally
concerned at what is happening to the people of Palestine, as we are with what
is happening to the people of Ukraine,” she said.
Before the closed-door meeting
with Pandor, Blinken had said that the United States’ good relations with South
Africa would allow them to be frank in discussing their differences.
Many African countries have
declined to follow the U.S. lead in condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Some were among more than a dozen African governments that have signed security
deals with the Wagner Group, a shadowy Russian mercenary group that the U.S.
and other countries say is backed by the Kremlin.
Sub-Saharan nations also have
been major recipients of Chinese investment through its “Belt and Road
Initiative,” which supports infrastructure developments. - AP
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