UNITED NATIONS, New York
The U.S. ambassador to the
United Nations headed to Africa on Wednesday, saying she was going to focus on
how the United State can help Uganda, Ghana and Cape Verde deal with the food
crisis that has hit the continent particularly hard — not to compete with China
and Russia.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield said
the long-planned trip is not part of global competition with either of
America’s rivals, but it is part of a series of high-level U.S. engagements
“that aim to affirm and strengthen our partnerships and relationships with
African leaders and peoples.”
Her trip from Aug. 4-7 will be
followed immediately by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s visits to
South Africa, Congo and Rwanda from Aug. 7-11. It also comes on the heels of
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s visit last week to Egypt, Ethiopia,
Uganda and the Republic of Congo where he accused the U.S. and European
countries of driving up food prices.
China’s Foreign Minister Wang
Yi began 2022 with a four-day visit to Eritrea, Kenya and the Comoros, keeping
a 32-year tradition that the country’s top diplomat make his first trip of the
year to Africa.
“We’re not catching up. They
are catching up,” Thomas-Greenfield said. “We have been engaging with this
continent for decades, and even my own career is very much evidence of that.”
Thomas-Greenfield first went
to Africa as a student in the 1970s, and in her career as a U.S. diplomat she
rose to be assistant secretary of state for African affairs from 2013 to 2017.
She said high energy prices,
climate change, COVID-19 and increasing conflict have pushed millions of
Africans “to the brink,” and that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion
of Ukraine on Feb. 24 has added to the crisis, “especially since some countries
in Africa once got up to 75% of their wheat from Russia and Ukraine.”
The U.S. ambassador said the
three countries she is visiting — Uganda first followed by Ghana and Cape Verde
— all face serious food security situations because of the significant rise in
the cost of food and energy. But she said Ghana has been a leader in dealing
with it and she will be visiting a market, meeting farmers and going to a grain
factory in the country “to see how we can help them improve on their
production.”
In an interview and at a news
conference ahead of her three-nation visit, Thomas-Greenfield said her trip
happens to come on the heels of Lavrov’s visit.
Refusing to call Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine a war, Lavrov said: “The situation in Ukraine did
additionally negatively affect food markets, but not due to the Russian special
operation, rather due to the absolutely inadequate reaction of the West, which
announced sanctions.”
Thomas-Greenfield countered:
“Russia is there to defend what they know they have to defend — that they took
actions that are hurting Africans, and they’re trying to somehow defend their
actions and blame somebody else for the impact that their actions are having on
the African continent.”
“They can try to do that. But
my question to them is, how are you helping Africans to address the food
insecurity issue, not whom you’re blaming for the food insecurity issues,” she
said. “We’re there to help Africans address those issues. Russia can deal with
its own problems.”
As for China, while its trade
with Africa last year was dramatically higher than U.S. trade,
Thomas-Greenfield said “if you look at our figures, and how far back our
engagement has been with the Africans, then we really are far above those
numbers.”
“As you look at what China’s
doing in Africa, you need to look at the debt trap that African countries, many
of them, have faced because of those relationships with China,” she said.
China has become one of the
biggest lenders to developing countries through its Belt and Road initiative to
expand trade by building ports, railways and other infrastructure across
Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
Wang, China’s foreign
minister, insisted during his visit to Kenya in January that there is no “debt
trap.”
“The so-called `debt trap’ in
Africa is not a fact, but a malicious hype-up,” he said. “It is an ‘utterance
trap’ created by those external forces that do not want to see Africa
accelerate development. If there is any `trap’ in Africa, it is the `poverty trap.’”
Thomas-Greenfield said the
U.S. is “not telling African countries they can’t engage with China.”
“What we are engaged in is
vision for economic development that promotes democracy and that promotes
respect for human rights and transparency and strengthening the capacity for
Africans to create jobs for their own citizens,” she said. “We respect the
ability of countries to decide for themselves whether they want to partner with
China or not.” - AP
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