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Why Africa Chose China

2:20 minutes - excellent point

Africa is getting renewed attention from Washington — and some African states are courting African Americans

Asafa Jalata, University of Tennessee

https://theconversation.com/africa-is-g ... ans-203882

May 25, 2023


President Joe Biden delivers remarks at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington on Dec. 15, 2022. Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images News via Getty Images

Recent allegations by the U.S. ambassador to South Africa that the African nation gave ammunition and weapons to Russia https://www.nytimes.com/2023/05/11/worl ... Position=1 in December 2022, amid Russia’s war on Ukraine, illustrate the complexity of U.S.-Africa relations.

Even as South Africa investigates those claims, https://www.ft.com/content/aa650020-030 ... 1314e39eac the Biden administration is trying to strengthen ties with the African Union, a continental member organization, and 49 of Africa’s 54 countries, including South Africa, on geopolitical and commercial https://www.state.gov/africasummit/ issues.

The only African countries the U.S. is not courting are four that were suspended https://thehill.com/policy/internationa ... ns-summit/ from the African Union, and Eritrea, a country with which the United States doesn’t have a formal relationship.

The U.S. is making this grand African play as it competes with China to influence the continent’s future. https://www.jstor.org/stable/26301066

And while this particular U.S.-China contest is relatively new, U.S. involvement in Africa is not.

The way the U.S. has been involved on the continent, though, has changed over time, depending on the era, U.S. interests and a particular African nation’s needs. In 1822, for example, the U.S. began to send freeborn African Americans https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/globalconnecti ... /uspolicy/ and emancipated former enslaved African Americans to Africa, where they settled the colony that would eventually become Liberia. That settlement was originally governed by white Americans.

After Liberia became a self-governing, Black republic in 1847, https://www.history.com/this-day-in-his ... proclaimed it relied heavily on U.S. financial assistance. By 1870, that assistance came by way of high-interest loans.

Decolonization and US interest in Africa

U.S. involvement with other African states took root after various countries, formerly governed by colonial powers, entered into self-rule. American policy objectives on the continent centered around U.S. strategic interests and came in the form of military and economic aid.

The U.S., for example, established diplomatic relationships with Egypt in 1922, https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-egypt/ Sudan in 1956 https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-sudan/ and Ghana in 1957, https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-ghana/ after those countries gained independence from the United Kingdom.

Beginning in the late 1950s, https://history.state.gov/historicaldoc ... -60v14/d27 when other African countries gained independence, the U.S. formed diplomatic and commercial ties with them as well and worked to reduce the Soviet Union’s influence on the continent. In 1961 and 1962, the U.S. persuaded West African countries to deny the Soviet Union commercial flyover and landing rights https://academic.oup.com/book/25770/cha ... m=fulltext in their territories.

After the the Cold War ended, https://www.ushistory.org/us/59e.asp the U.S. lacked clear policy objectives https://cornellpress.manifoldapp.org/re ... 65e80fa4bf toward Africa, and interaction between the superpower and the continent waned.

Renewed US interest in Africa

In the 21st century, the U.S. began to turn its attention back to Africa as a way of pushing its strategic interests and strengthening commercial and diplomatic ties with African countries.

In 2000, during the Clinton administration, Congress enacted the African Growth and Opportunity Act https://ustr.gov/issue-areas/trade-deve ... y-act-agoa to open American markets to eligible African countries.

Then, in 2003, President George W. Bush launched the global health initiative, https://www.ft.com/content/72424694-a86 ... c8325aaa04 the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, that has been the U.S.’s most significant action on the continent since its nearly 250-year enslavement of Africans - first as Colonial America, then the U.S. - from 1619 to 1865.

Known as PEPFAR, the initiative is credited with saving 21 million lives, https://apnews.com/article/health-georg ... 1db9be9687 mostly in Africa and the Caribbean.

More recently, the U.S. has held two U.S.-Africa Leaders Summits. https://qz.com/us-africa-leaders-summit ... 1849873793

President Barack Obama hosted the first one https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/us ... ers-summit in 2014, and President Joe Biden held the second one in 2022. https://www.state.gov/africasummit/

And, as part of the Biden administration’s Africa outreach, Vice President Kamala Harris visited https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/27/worl ... visit.html Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia in March 2023 to discuss security and economic issues with leaders of those countries.


Vice President Kamala Harris and Zambian President Hakainde Hichilema walk outside the State House in the Zambian capital, Lusaka, on March 31, 2023. Salim Dawood/AFP via Getty Images

It’s not just about diplomacy

Yet, the relationships between the U.S. and African nations run deeper than government-to-government partnerships or aid.

As Biden said during the December 2022 U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit dinner: https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-roo ... it-dinner/

Our people lie at the heart of the deep and profound connection that forever binds Africa and the United States together. We remember the stolen men and women and children who were brought to our shores in chains, subjected to unimaginable cruelty. My nation’s original sin was that period.

As the U.S. courts Africa broadly, African countries, such as Sierra Leone, https://vindicatornewspapersl.com/?p=990 Liberia https://frontpageafricaonline.com/news/ ... avery-era/ and others, are courting African Americans, encouraging them to visit, set up homes and establish businesses and economic ties in their ancestral homeland. No country has made more of an effort than Ghana, https://www.newsweek.com/ghana-accra-ba ... ra-1509845 which, for example, is making special accommodation for Americans who purchase land https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/af ... story.html there.

Invitation to the motherland

In 2000, the Ghanaian Parliament passed a Citizenship Act, https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazi ... n-diaspora which grants the right of dual citizenship to people of Ghanaian descent. African Americans have been able to trace their ancestry to Ghana https://www.reuters.com/article/us-afri ... SKCN1VC16H and other African countries because of genetic testing. And the Immigration Act, https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazi ... n-diaspora passed the same year, includes a “Right of Abode” that allows anyone in the African diaspora to travel to and from the country freely.

In September 2018, Nana Akufo-Addo, president of Ghana, announced a campaign commemorating https://www.yearofreturn.com/about/ the 400-year anniversary of the first enslaved Africans brought to Jamestown, Virginia, with a goal of spurring African American business, investment and tourism in the West African nation. Ghana has long promised African Americans and other people in the African diaspora dual citizenship rights https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazi ... n-diaspora and business opportunities. Ghanaian leaders have made it clear that they want African Americans and others to invest https://www.cfr.org/blog/ghana-looks-lo ... investment in the country.

Since the Year of Return, at least 1,500 African Americans have received citizenship rights https://www.dw.com/en/back-to-roots-why ... a-64403580 in Ghana, and some 5,000 African Americans have made Ghana their permanent home. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/black-amer ... -in-ghana/

The Ghanaian government launched another campaign in 2020 https://beyondthereturngh.com/ to increase tourism and investment in the country by people in the African diaspora, as well as to deepen social ties between Ghanaians and the diaspora.

Following Ghana’s playbook, in 2021, Senegal worked with African American business leaders to celebrate its first “The Return.” https://qz.com/africa/2022699/senegal-l ... -americans

Held on June 19 that year, the event was a historic Juneteenth initiative, modeled after the American holiday https://nmaahc.si.edu/explore/stories/h ... juneteenth to commemorate the end of slavery in the United States and encourage African American investment in the country.

Akufo-Addo may have sparked a 21st century resurgence of trans-Atlantic African appeals to African Americans and other people in the African diaspora.


African American tourists hold hands as they enter the ocean during a remembrance ceremony in Ghana, after visiting the ‘Door of No Return’ at Cape Coast Castle. It is where enslaved Africans were held before being taken by force to what would become the United States. Natalija Gormalova/AFP via Getty Images

In 2021, Chinese authorities issued new rules that let minors play online games for only an hour a day and only on Fridays, weekends and public holidays — an effort to curb internet addiction.

What's so controversial about that?

Fiyameta wrote: ↑

27 May 2023, 15:42

In 2021, Chinese authorities issued new rules that let minors play online games for only an hour a day and only on Fridays, weekends and public holidays — an effort to curb internet addiction.

What's so controversial about that?

In my opinion, that is a wise decision taken by China. Look how our kids are behaving, here in the West, where they wouldn't even lie down their mobile phone even while eating. Sometimes one wonders where is the family value that we grew up with.

Fiyameta wrote: ↑

27 May 2023, 17:12

Is this Journalist the same guy that the former PM of Ethiopia, Ato Hailemariam Dasalegn, called him "you are rude" in front of the camera during an interview the guy conducted with the PM in Brussels, i think?

I still sense some kind of rudeness in his face, I don't know him, though.

Fiyameta wrote: ↑

27 May 2023, 17:12

It took me a while....to recognize why his name sounds familiar. He gives to Africans some sort of award for 'good governance' every year(?). I don't know what his definition of 'good governance' constitutes......but I would expect it to be adorned with the usual western liberal-laced buzzwords. And of course, African elites, bereft of any original ideas, never pause to mull over whether these borrowed 'concepts' fit the socioeconomic needs of their respective societies.

Here is another child of Africa squandering his wealth on people who wouldn't make a dent on Africa's myriad challenges, so he would have the ferenjis validation. He should extricate himself from hypocrisy before he criticizes others for their double standards.

Fiyamenta,

China is not by itself power it has certain Western corporations along as partners. I doubt Shien is Chinese altogether.