Carrot-and-stick America catch-up game with China

The United States is stridently upping its game to re-assert its influence and out-compete China and, to a lesser extent, Russia, in Africa.

In the recently concluded US-Africa Leaders’ Summit, America dangled juicy carrots and wielded heavy sticks in a smart-power game that blends the superpower’s immense soft-power and hard-power capacity as a grand strategy to roll-back China’s influence on the continent.

The summit, held in Washington on December 13-16, revealed America’s two competing visions of Africa in the 21st century. It was a bold strategic response to the ‘benign disinterest’ in Africa that started under President Barrack Obama (2009-2017) but became public and palpable under Donald Trump (2017-2021) when disdain and total disregard for the continent led to the waning of America’s influence.

The biggest US-Africa ‘jamboree’ of its kind also signified America’s second vision of re-engaging Africa. In July 2022, President Joe Biden announced that “the United States aims to resume diplomatic relations with African states after a gap from the previous administration”. But it is the National Security Strategy, unveiled on October 12, 2022 and arguably America’s most consequential after the Cold War, that set the ideology contours and the nuts-and-bolts of how exactly the superpower planned to re-engage the continent.

Viewed together, the summit and the blueprint mark a radical shift in America’s African policy. They launched America’s campaign to win a competitive edge over China as its main challenger for the mantle of global leadership in the crucial 2022-2032 decade. Driving the campaign is Washington’s view of China as “the only competitor combining both the intent to reshape the international order increasingly, the economic, diplomatic, military, and technological power to do it.” But Russia is “still profoundly dangerous.” Biden’s personal diplomacy seeks to win hearts and minds in Africa and to depict America as a better partner than China or Russia.

49 African leaders

Attended by 49 African leaders, the African Union (AU) and critical non-state actors, the second US-Africa fete since 2014 recognizes African governments, institutions, and people as a major geopolitical force. Biden jettisons the Afro-pessimism of “hopeless continent” and taken to the trope of Africa rising. “The United States is all in on Africa's future," Biden told the Africans. “When Africa succeeds, the United States succeeds. Quite frankly, the whole world succeeds as well.”

America also sheds off its traditional hegemonic approach, promising to “engage African countries as equal partners”. Seemingly, this is a response to Trump’s January 2018 reference to African countries as “shithole” nations and to President Xi Jinping’s idea of building “a community of shared destiny” and “shared prosperity” in the remaking of a non-hegemonic world order.

America dangled some diplomatic carrots. It promised to sign a memorandum with the African Continental Free Trade Area, one of the world's biggest free-trade areas, to “unlock new opportunities for trade and investment” and the African Union's admission as a permanent member of the Group of 20 major economies. Predictably, Biden will likely visit the continent in the new year.

National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said the US would commit $55bn (£44bn) to Africa over the next three years. Biden spoke about a $500m-investment to reduce transport costs at a key West African port in Benin, another $350m to boosting the digital economy and $15billion-worth of deals had been struck at the US-Africa Business Forum.

But America’s economic muscle in out-competing China in Africa appears weaker. Between 2014 when the first US-Africa Summit took place and 2018, China provided a whopping $120 billion — $60 billion in 2015 and another $60 billion in 2018. But since 2018, as a response to a withering propaganda blitz that characterise its affordable and no-strings-attached development assistance to Africa as a ‘debt diplomacy’, China has cut on bilateral debts, expanding its footprints in private investments and partnerships in Africa’s manufacturing and industrialisation.

Beijing is also Africa’s biggest source of foreign direct investment. Its investments in Africa increased from a pittance $75 million in 2003 to over $2.7 billion in 2021. China is Africa’s leading trading partner. In contrast, Africa only accounts for just over 1 per cent of US foreign trade, dominated by petroleum imports from Nigeria and Angola. Sino-Africa trade reached an all-time high of $192billion in 2019.

The summit focused on building on already existing agenda and programmes, including the Obama-era Prosper Africa launched in 2018 ‘to increase two-way trade’ US-Africa trade, the Power Africa Initiative to connect Africa to the grid, and the Clinton-era Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa), which provides African apparel manufacturers preferential access to the US market.

Bilateral diplomacy

But the summit marks America’s significant turn to bilateral diplomacy to strengthen relations with individual African states — perhaps away from over-reliance on the Bretton-Woods institutions. On December 15, 2022, it signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Kenya Concerning Strategic Civil Nuclear Cooperation (NCMOU). This cooperation in nuclear energy, science, and technology has the potential to improve long-standing US-Kenya diplomatic ties and their cooperation in the fields of security, energy, security and commerce.

Additionally, the White House appointed a special envoy on Africa. But the US-Africa Summit is yet to emerge as a focused architecture of engaging Africa in the same league as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) as the policy juggernaut of Sino-Africa cooperation.

As Washington wages a war of values between the abode of “democracy” and that of “authoritarian”, it is wielding a heavy stake against African partners it they fail to make progress towards human rights and democratic governance. On the sidelines of the summit, Biden met the leaders of the six African nations slated to hold elections in 2023 to press for free votes.

Africa’s pivotal states are facing a severe bout of ‘hegemonic instability’ mirroring the waning of America’s theory of hegemonic stability globally. President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa did not attend the summit.

The good news is that America’s competition with China is not a zero-sum game. “It is possible for the United States and the PRC to co-exist peacefully, and share in and contribute to human progress together,” says the strategy (p.24).

As US plays catch-up with China and Russia, its focus should be on Africa as an autonomous continent with its own dreams and interests and contributing to global governance and prosperity—not as a theatre of geopolitical tussles.

Prof Kagwanja is former government adviser, the chief executive of the Africa Institute (API) and adjunct scholar at the University of Nairobi and the National Defence University, Kenya.