If anything, the US-Africa Summit that was held towards the end of 2022 (last year), has one big result: a decline in United States’ hegemony on Africa.
President Joe Biden was left thinking, what hit him. The summit yielding the wrong results because of the US’ approach to other nations.
Everyone who attended, including the US itself realises that the US has lost grip in Africa while Russia and China, continue to gain ground.
Where the US has sought and used bully tactics, Russia and China has used win-win tactics and mutual respect.
Where the US has brazenly sponsored regime change — through many NGOs disguised as proponents of democracy, good governance and accountability — Russia and China have talked, negotiated and created common understanding with sitting governments.
Russia and China treat African business people and their Governments as equal partners, while USA thinks it is the greatest and hence can dictate things.
The Russia-Africa Summit and China-Africa summit were by far more successful and yielding results than the US-Africa Summit.
US’ big mistake is sticking to archaic and moribund politics where it thinks it is the big brother and hence should prescribe solutions to Africans without hearing the side of the Africans.
The political leadership in Africa has changed in attitude over the years and the leaders are now too difficult to be bullied. They might not be in the ilk of former Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe who would chide them in public, but they are certainly more radical and more calculative to the point where they resist in a very diplomatic manner.
Judging by the outcome of the US-Africa summit, the meeting became a dump squib because the US planned and scheduled everything without asking the African leaders what they wanted to discuss. Without asking African leaders what they wished to discuss.
It was purely crass. World class crass.
Africa has vast tracks of untapped natural resources and the current leadership knows fairly and squarely that they own the resources and they will not accept being bullied off their own resources.
The worst thing that has happened to the US is that it has lost the god image that it has always wanted the world to believe.
The US has lost its moral standing by employing regime change tactics in countries it disagrees with. The US has sponsored many illegal wars in the world and killed many people than any other country.
At the moment the US has no moral standing to be supporting Ukraine against Russia.
There is no justification why US has spent billions of dollars supporting Ukraine. We know that this is because of US’ express hatred of Russia because Russia is forthright.
Now at the Summit the hounding moment was that the US was forced to drop its intended law to railroad African countries against using Russian military equipment. Africans deserve the right to use military equipment from a country of their choice. The US-Africa Summit left US with bruised ego.
Never Matata is a Kenyan a political scientist based in Brussels, Belgium. – The Herald
