The Weaknesses of Biden's Africa Strategy

The U.S. doesn’t know how to deal with non-aligned countries very well.

Chris Olaoluwa Ògúnmọ́dẹdé makes a strong case that the Biden administration’s recently unveiled Africa strategy has fallen short of the mark:

Many analysts in the U.S. praised what they saw as Washington’s willingness to improve relations with African states after four years of hostility during the Trump administration. But the relatively muted reaction in African capitals and among the continent’s populations to Blinken’s tour and the strategy document reflects the uphill task the Biden administration faces in convincing skeptics across Africa that Washington is sincere about its claims to be seeking a vital partnership with “shared priorities.”

Blinken hit a lot of the right notes in his Pretoria speech, but there is good reason to doubt that the U.S. is prepared to put sufficient resources of the right kind to back up the official rhetoric. Foreign Policy previewed the speech at the start of August and quoted an anonymous U.S. official as saying, “A strategy without funding is just fancy words on paper.” The other basic problem that the U.S. has in its dealings with African states is that it has spent decades mostly neglecting these countries except for how relationships with them can be used for militarized counterterrorism, and it has allowed all of its other capabilities to atrophy.