This weekend, US Vice President Kamala Harris will embark on a thr, The latest move in strengthening American engagement with a continent largely overlooked under Republican Donald Trump and long seen in Washington as more of a problem region than a land of opportunity is Harris’ visit to Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia.
On the condition of anonymity, a senior US official told reporters, “We want to undermine long-held and frequently antiquated notions of what it means to live, work, and invest in Africa.
According to the official, Harris “believes that African ingenuity and ideas will define the future of the world.”
With US officials praising what they claim is the more positive US message, the tour is also a part of Washington’s response against expanding Chinese and Russian participation in the resource-rich continent.
ee-nation tour of Africa to advance the White House’s optimistic view of the region as the “future of the world.”
A senior US official said, “It’s no secret that we are engaged in rivalry with China quite explicitly, to compete (with) China in the long run. The person maintained that the United States is not attempting to replicate Beijing’s strategies, citing “serious worries” about China’s use of loans to exert influence over fragile economies in Africa.
He declared a “affirmative strategy in Africa” that relies on public-private partnerships and transparency, saying “Our relationship with Africa cannot and should not be defined by competition with China.”
personal background
Prior to Harris, who makes his first stop in Ghana on Sunday, five members of President Joe Biden’s cabinet and First Lady Jill Biden traveled to Africa.
The vice president’s trip, which she will take on Wednesday to Tanzania and then on Friday to Zambia, has a particular poignancy. She is the first Black woman and person of color to hold the number two position in the White House. When her maternal grandpa, an Indian, worked in Zambia when she was a small girl, she traveled there.
Additionally, she will be able to strengthen her reputation in foreign policy ahead of what is anticipated to be Biden’s bid for a second term in office, with her once more by his side.
Harris’s tour will have a major focus on youth in this fast developing continent, where the average age is only 19 and where it is predicted that one in four people in the world will live by 2050.
Highlights include a “big address” to young people in Ghana and a trip to Cape Coast Castle, which used to be a center for the slave trade. Meetings with leaders in the digital sector, groups supporting women in the workforce, and IT entrepreneurs will be among the stops made in the future.
Harris will lay a wreath to remember the 1998 bombing of the American embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, as a reminder of the pervasive and ongoing conflict involving extremist Islamic groups.
AFP