November 19, (THEWILL) – US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Friday said the United States considers Africa a “major geopolitical power” where it can deliver tangible benefits.
In an address at the ECOWAS headquarters in Abuja, Blinken said he knows Africans have been “wary of the strings” that often come with foreign engagement.
“I want to be clear — the United States doesn’t want to limit your partnerships with other countries. We don’t want to make you choose. We want to give you choices. Our approach will be sustainable, transparent and values-driven,” he said.
Blinken added that other nations’ infrastructure deals can be “opaque, coercive, burden countries with unmanageable debt, are environmentally destructive and don’t always benefit the people who actually live there. We will do things differently.”
He said the Biden administration “firmly believes that it’s time to stop treating Africa as a subject of geopolitics –- and start treating it as the major geopolitical player it has become.”
Blinken however, acknowledged reasons for cynicism, saying that Africans too often “have been treated as junior partners — or worse — rather than equal ones. And we’re sensitive to centuries of colonialism, slavery, and exploitation that lead to painful legacies that endure today.”
He promised cooperation on areas including fighting Covid-19 and climate change.
Blinken also met with religious and civil society leaders as part of an effort to move beyond dealings just with governments in Africa.
He praised grassroots efforts to defuse religious tensions, two days after he reversed the Trump administration’s decision, encouraged by evangelical Christians, to put Nigeria on a blacklist on religious freedom.
“Your leadership is one that we hope all will follow on, not just in Nigeria but beyond”, Blinken said, calling the diversity of Africa’s most populous country , a very wonderful and powerful thing.
“Democratic backsliding is not just an African problem – it’s a global problem. My own country is struggling with threats to our democracy. And the solutions to those threats will come as much from Africa as from anywhere. We need to show how democracies can deliver what citizens want, quickly and effectively,” he said.
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