Secretary of State Antony Blinken started his second African tour in less than a year by Pretoria before rallying the DRC and Rwanda.
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“The United States will not dictate the choices of Africa. And no one else should do so.” traveling to South Africa, the first stage of its African tour on Monday, July 8, before Returning in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken played the humility card. The “new strategy of the United States in sub-Saharan Africa” which he presented to Pretoria pleads for an equal “partnership, especially in the fields of health, climate transition and access to energies .
After eight years of presidency Trump marked by a relative disinterest, the Biden administration strives to regain foot in Africa in the face of the growing influence of China and Russia, against the backdrop of tensions exacerbated by the war in Ukraine. This is the second time, in less than nine months, that the American Secretary of State goes to the continent.
recalling that a quarter of the world’s population will be African by 2050, he assured, Monday, wanted to “invest in the future” by building a “real partnership” in the long term. “We have all heard the speeches according to which South Africa and the continent as a whole constitute the last playground in the competition between superpowers. Basically, this is not how we see things,” -It asserted.
“offer a choice”
Fifteen days earlier, during a trip to Egypt, Congo-Brazzaville, Uganda and Ethiopia, the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Sergey Lavrov, had denounced the “non-disguised attempts of the United States and Their European satellites to take over and impose a unipolar world order “. A message that resonates particularly in Africa. Pretoria, as fourteen other African capitals, had refrained, in March, to vote a United Nations resolution condemning “Russian aggression” in Ukraine.
“Our goal is not to say: you must choose. It is to offer a choice,” replied Antony Blinken. The United States notably wish to promote democracy by supporting civil society and the press, while “what Russia exports the most in the most difficult places on the continent is its proxy, the Wagner group, [of which The presence] results in more deaths and more destruction in far too many countries, “pointed out the Secretary of State.
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