US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s recent African tour is apparently a result of Washington’s desire to reshuffle the cards in a continent where China has already tactfully deployed itself.
While China is fighting with all its might against the covid-19 epidemic which has already killed over 2,000 people, the United States is launching an offensive in Africa. Opportunism or coincidence?
From February 15 to 19, the US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited Senegal, Angola and Ethiopia. His objective: to restore Uncle Sam’s country to a prominent place in Africa.
“The United States has been permanently in Africa for decades. But it’s been a long time since there has been a major visit (19 months to be exact). So it’s quite normal for a leading personality to come to this continent to mark the territory,” said Jean-Joseph Boillot, a professor of economics and social sciences.
According to data from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), China is Africa’s leading trading partner. In 2018, the value of Sino-African trade was valued at $200 billion, while American-African trade was barely over $40 billion.
“The economic indicators sometimes reflect hazards or cyclical events,” said El Hadj Alioune Diouf, professor of International Economics. His French counterpart, Boillot pointed out that “America acts essentially through its large multinationals. And if we take into account their presence in Africa, there is nothing to be ashamed of.
Slowly but surely, the Middle Kingdom has managed to weave its web in Africa, beating out former colonial powers such as France and the United Kingdom. A McKinsey Africa study, published in 2017, indicated that there are more than 10,000 Chinese companies operating in Africa.
“The two superpowers (USA and China) are very interested in Africa. They are both competing and complementary. It is up to Africa to know how to work best with both. Kenya, for example, has excellent relations with the United States and China,” noted Mr. Boillot, an associate researcher at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (IRIS).
According to Mr. Diouf, former Director of Internal Trade of Senegal, “China’s presence in Africa is very important and shakes everything up. This situation allows Africans to have a diversity of partners (and they can) play on this benevolent rivalry to have more interesting conditionalities.”
Whether in the sectors of Building and Public Works (BTP), exploitation of natural resources, trade, etc., China’s thirst for conquest seems unquenchable.
In the juicy mobile phone business, Tecno and especially Huawei are competing for market share with the American giant Apple. Their modus operandi: selling smart phones at affordable prices; a strategy that is clearly paying off.
In Africa, according to some analysts, China is bypassing financing institutions such as the World Bank (WB) or the International Monetary Fund (IMF). This debt diplomacy of Beijing annoys the West enormously.
“The US has been practicing debt diplomacy for years. It’s a well-known American policy. In fact, it goes back to the Marshall Plan (for the reconstruction of Europe devastated by the Second World War). In the debt crisis of the 1990s in Africa, the World Bank was the pilot of this over-indebtedness,” reminded Jean-Joseph Boillot, also author of the book Chindiafrique: China, India and Africa will make the world of tomorrow.
El Hadj Alioune Diouf maintained that Africa’s debt to China “is not a problem. It is completely sustainable. Africans know perfectly well what they are doing.” He added that he believes that this debate is posed because “America has an adversary who punches him in the face” but “Africans must remain faithful to their tradition as a non-aligned continent and cooperate with Europe, America, China…”
For his part, Mr. Boillot has a completely different reading of the loans granted to African countries: “China is reproducing more or less the same mechanism. It is quite right to think that the way it has designed its deployment in Africa leads to over-indebtedness with projects that are not always profitable.”
Through the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), the United States is giving Africa the possibility “to export a certain number of products without paying customs duties and without being subject to quotas,” Diouf said.
Now, he added, “it would be good for America to invest more in Africa if it feels that China is occupying the field. For Africa, investment should be strategic, not trade. It is with investment that we will transform the potential of this continent with the creation of factories. This is also what we expect from the Chinese.”
Having noted that “Africa played China against the United States,” Boillot hopes that it will not now do the opposite. For this specialist in economic and social sciences, it should rather tell the Americans, the Chinese and even the Europeans” to present, in transparency, their projects, their profitability and the means of payment” to choose “the best offers.”
ID/Dng/cgd/lb/abj/APA