DI SPATC H E S| U.S.-AFRICA FOREIGN POLICY
What Biden should do in Africa
Robert I. Rotberg
U
.S. President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken have not yet decided who will be in charge of Africa policy-making, but we already know that the nations of Africa will be respected, befriended and hardly consigned to the lavatory and schoolboy lavatory talk. Biden has travelled to Africa multiple times. Blinken, on Biden’s behalf, 48
will need to oversee and restore trust in other key geographical arenas, but he has visited the continent and will doubtless want and need to deepen engagement across Africa, not only in order to compete effectively with China and Russia. Moreover, Africa’s serious security issues are already vexing Washington, with no easy answers in sight. Simply by listening to African concerns sympathetically, the new U.S. foreign policy establishment will begin to recover the enormous losses in American prestige, comity and influence that occurred as a result of President Donald Trump’s hostility and disdain. Despite the Trump-inspired assault on the Capitol Building, the electoral preferences of the American people prevailed and a transfer of power took place. Notwithstanding the tumult, that
should reassure civil society and democrats throughout the African continent that despots need not rule and that there is hope for major improvements of governance in their own home countries. Changing the atmosphere, and the better and more collegial manner in which the United States interacts with each African nation, will constitute positive development and be widely cheered in the disparate and very differently situated countries of the continent. But Africans will lean on Washington to engage far more even than the Obama administration chose to do. Under Biden, the U.S. can strengthen its diplomatic and bureaucratic posture in and towards Africa, both grievously weakened by Trump’s neglect and antagonism. Washington needs to send WINTER 2021 | JAN-FEB-MAR
UN PHOTO
Under U.S. President Joe Biden, shown here, and Secretary of State Tony Blinken, Africans can expect to be respected, befriended and no longer consigned to the rude discourse and name-calling they have been for the past few years.
