The Problem With U.S. Diplomacy in Africa

A strange note hung over Joe Biden’s first and last visit as U.S. president to sub-Saharan Africa this week.

Over and over, Biden, members of his team, and commentators said Washington’s relations with the continent—and with Angola, the lone stop on this visit—were strengthened, even elevated, by one of the gravest historical atrocities of the modern age: the enslavement of 12.5 million people from Africa and the deaths of many millions more in the headlong Western pursuit of wealth from chattel slavery and plantation agriculture.

That sentiment stood out in a New York Times article ahead of Biden’s visit: “A vast majority of African Americans have Angolan ancestry. … In the battle for influence in mineral- and oil-rich Angola, that gives the United States an ability to draw historical and cultural ties to the country in ways that China, its rival, cannot.”

In a recent journalism class I taught, where students from overseas were heavily represented, this messaging drew suppressed guffaws and looks of stark derision. By what kind of perverse logic, they wondered, could barbarism and inhumanity on such a mass scale be a source of diplomatic strength? Yet, as I told them, however odd and uncomfortable the surface logic, there is indeed a strong and even venerable current of feeling and sophisticated thought linking African Americans (13.6 percent of the U.S. population) with the African continent—and, perhaps less well known, of Africans who have cherished and even celebrated the bonds linking them to members of the Black diaspora across the Atlantic.

Biden and his diplomats gave little indication that they understand the depth of these currents, even as they alluded to them. They are the topic of my forthcoming book, The Second Emancipation: Nkrumah, Pan-Africanism, and Global Blackness at High Tide, and date back to thinkers in Africa and the Americas born in the 19th century, such as Edward Wilmot Blyden and J.E. Casely Hayford, as well as those who profoundly marked the 20th, from Marcus Garvey and W.E.B. Du Bois to Kwame Nkrumah, Martin Luther King Jr., and Malcolm X.

But what jarred me most about the messaging around the presidential trip was something altogether different: the constant need to summon or justify U.S. interest in Africa by invoking competition with China.

A couple of reality checks are in order. There is no real competition between China and the United States in Africa, not if competition means a remotely close contest between two parties participating in the same game. China’s economic engagement with the continent is vastly more developed and sustained than the United States’, and Washington’s recent announcement of support for a new railroad line that will traverse southern Africa will not change this.

There is little political competition between Washington and Beijing in Africa, either. However much he proclaimed Africa’s importance to the United States and to the future of the world, with less than 50 days remaining in his presidency, Biden barely made it to Angola—a fact that speaks eloquently about where the continent sits in the hierarchy of U.S. interests. By contrast, Chinese leaders have long made a standard practice of visiting multiple African countries most years, often at the start of the year for emphasis. Other Chinese officials, including the foreign minister, are also regular visitors.

U.S. politicians and analysts seem to be ignoring the reality, clear as day in a recent New York Times interview with Angolan President João Lourenço, that African leaders are turned off by the idea that outsiders seek to engage with them for reasons of geopolitical and ideological competition. The continent has experienced this before, during the long and dark years of the Cold War, when African countries, including Angola, became collateral damage in the contests among the United States, the Soviet Union, and China.

Africa’s aversion to being caught up in someone else’s game—namely, a global rivalry between Washington and Beijing—is part of a much broader new geopolitical reality. Amid growing multipolarity, few countries see any attraction in clearly aligning with big powers. This is true in Southeast Asia, South Asia, and Latin America.

This points anew to the need—clear for years but seldom heeded—for Washington to overhaul its diplomatic language toward Africa. The United States needs to stop talking about China and demonstrate its interest by showing up. Showing up means engaging much more frequently at a high political level. Showing up means engaging much more deeply economically. Showcase projects are fine, but it would be more impressive for Washington to devise ways to get U.S. companies to invest much more in Africa and diversify away from the longtime standard play of oil and mineral extraction on the continent.

Africa is, demographically speaking, the fastest-growing continent in the world by far, and it stands to account for a huge portion of the global working-age population in the second half of this century. This means there will be opportunities for manufacturing, education, and service investments for companies in forward-looking rich countries. Across the continent, African cities are mushrooming in size and will soon dominate the list of the world’s biggest metropolises. As this all happens, Africa, which is currently an afterthought in international trade, will become a much more important source of global demand and consumption. Here, too, lies immense opportunity in housing, urban development, utilities, health, and yet more services.

Washington can demonstrate how important Africa is far better through its actions in areas such as these than through its fine-sounding words. And for those who are wary about costly charity in what Washington’s next president has crudely disparaged as “shithole countries,” the best part is that the United States can engage with Africa in ways that enhance its own interests—all without even mentioning China.