Africa: The United States will invest 2 billion dollars there over ten years to boost “democracy and good governance”

The United States will invest $2 billion over ten years to boost democracy and good governance in sub-Saharan Africa. The information was made public by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken (photo) on Monday August 8 during his keynote address during his visit to South Africa.

This funding will be implemented under a program called the “Global Fragility Act” which aims to foster “more peaceful, more inclusive and more resilient societies in places where conditions are conducive to conflict”. The initiative concerns several countries on the continent such as Mozambique and the coastal countries of West Africa (Benin, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Guinea, and Togo).

More concretely, the program provides for the USA to provide assistance in specific areas that they will have identified. This US strategy builds on “decades of lessons learned in conflict prevention, such as cultivating good relationships between community leaders, government officials and security forces, which are essential to defusing tensions before prevent them from escalating into violence, and build resilience to the destabilizing effects of climate change, such as more frequent and severe droughts,” said the US Secretary of State.

This announcement comes on the back of a tour by the head of American diplomacy to three African countries: South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. In a document on the Biden administration’s African strategy published on August 8 by the American presidency, we learn that beyond the strengthening of commercial ties, it will above all be a question of “raising awareness” among African leaders of “the risks that represent for them the People’s Republic of China and Russia”.

But the reality of cooperation between Africa and the two competing powers of the USA is not the same. According to a research note, published last May, by the American think tank Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, since 2009, China has become the main trading partner of the continent.

Since then, trade between the United States and Africa has fallen from $142 billion in 2008 to $64 billion in 2021. Russia, for its part, derives a commercial advantage based on the export of cereals, but above all weapons and security services which have been the subject of controversy in recent times.

It should be noted that a USA-Africa summit is scheduled for next December, with a view to discussing with Washington’s African partners points of cooperation on several subjects, such as food security in the midst of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and climate change. For the time being, we have not yet identified the positions of political leaders on these various issues.