At Biden’s first Africa summit, US plays catch-up to China

President Joe Biden will convene some 50 African heads of state and leaders in Washington this week, with the goal of revitalizing US partnerships with Africa at a time when China and other US competitors are vying for influence in the continent.

Biden’s three-day US-Africa Leaders Summit is meant to advance shared priorities through conversations focused on food security, trade, climate change, good governance, global health and a range of global challenges, US officials said. 

An underlying theme of the summit, which begins Tuesday, is reinforcing American commitment to the continent. As its population swells, countries including China and Russia are making major economic and military inroads in Africa, home to some of the fastest-growing economies in the world and one of the largest regional voting blocs in the United Nations. 

“The summit is really rooted in the recognition that Africa is a key geopolitical player and one that is shaping our present and will shape our future,” a senior administration official said at a briefing last week.   

Analysts say the Washington gathering offers Biden a chance to reassure African leaders of the value the United States places on working with them, but not all summit participants are convinced. 

An African diplomat in Washington described the upcoming gathering as a “one-way summit” in which African countries didn’t have much of a say in the program.  

“This is a US summit to which African heads of state have been invited,” the diplomat said, speaking to Al-Monitor on condition of anonymity. “It’s more PR than it is real engagement.”

If the administration fails to unveil concrete initiatives that genuinely address Africans’ concerns, the summit risks widening the existing trust deficit, says Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, senior fellow and director of the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

“Powers like France, China and Turkey — they have a long-term engagement with Africa,” Dizolele said. “If you ask them what they’re trying to do, they can articulate that in a very clear way.” 

The summit’s agenda includes a leaders’ dinner at the White House and a forum bringing together US and African business and government leaders. Biden will also gather a small group of African leaders for a discussion on upcoming presidential elections in Africa. 

Administration officials have promised the unveiling of “major deliverables and initiatives” throughout the summit, during which Biden will also announce his support for the African Union becoming a permanent member of the G20.

On the eve of the gathering, the White House named Johnnie Carson as the new special representative for the summit’s implementation. Carson, a veteran diplomat with decades of experience in Africa, will help ensure announcements made this week “are translated into durable actions,” US national security advisor Jake Sullivan told reporters Monday. 

This week’s gathering of African leaders in Washington is the second since former President Barack Obama’s inaugural summit in 2014. For comparison, China — the continent’s largest trade partner — has hosted a forum on Chinese-African cooperation every three years since 2000. The European Union, Turkey, Japan and most recently Russia have also held African leaders’ summits of their own.

Tom Sheehy, a distinguished fellow in the Africa Center at the US Institute of Peace, said it’s important for the United States to have this sort of high-level diplomatic engagement with African leaders on a formal basis. 

“But the key is going to be the follow-up,” Sheehy said. “How enduring are some of these initiatives?” 

The White House says it strived for the most inclusive summit possible. It invited nearly every African head of state, excluding countries suspended from the African Union — Mali, Guinea, Burkina Faso and Sudan — and Eritrea, which lacks diplomatic relations with the United States. 

Several African leaders with checkered human rights reputations made the cut. They include Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, who since November 2020 has presided over a conflict in the country’s northern Tigray region that’s killed thousands of people and displaced millions from their homes.

Last year, the Biden administration suspended Ethiopia’s duty-free access to the US market over “gross violations” of human rights it said were carried out by Ethiopian government forces and other parties to the conflict. 

The administration also extended an invite to Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who was feted by former President Donald Trump during his last visit to Washington in 2019. Sisi has met twice with Biden this year — first at a July gathering of Arab leaders in Saudi Arabia, and more recently at the Egypt-hosted COP27 climate summit this November —  amid longstanding concerns over Cairo’s detention of political prisoners.

In September, the administration announced it was withholding a portion of Egypt’s $1.3 billion in annual security assistance that Congress had made contingent on human rights improvements. 

Also attending the summit is Tunisian President Kais Saied, whose sweeping power grab more than a decade after Tunisia emerged as the Arab Spring’s lone success story has alarmed the Biden administration and spurred calls for restricting the country’s security assistance. Saied will arrive days before Tunisia holds elections to replace the democratically elected parliament that Saied dissolved by decree in July 2021. 

Molly Phee, the top State Department official for Africa, told reporters the summit’s guest list reflects the administration’s commitment “to having respectful conversations even where there are areas of difference.”