Joe Biden pleaded on Wednesday to create a broad partnership with Africa, on the second day of a summit in Washington bringing together some fifty leaders from the continent and where multiple contracts were announced.
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“When Africa succeeds, the United States succeeds. The whole world is succeeding, ”said the American president in a speech where he shelled a series of investments from the United States for the African continent.
The Biden administration intends to free up $55 billion for Africa over the next three years in areas as varied as digital, infrastructure, health and energy transition.
The United States refuses to speak of a competition with China on the African continent and the American president has not openly alluded to the Asian giant.
But they do not hide their desire to strengthen their ties with African countries, when they have been accused of having neglected them.
A summit in a similar format took place in 2014 under the presidency of Barack Obama.
“We cannot solve the challenges before us without leadership from Africa. I’m not trying to be nice. It is a fact,” continued Joe Biden.
“This partnership is not intended to create political obligations, to create dependency,” he said.
In the evening, the president and his wife Jill Biden received their guests, around two long tables laden with flowers and candles, in a living room of the White House abundantly decorated for Christmas.
Joe Biden, after acknowledging the “original sin” of slavery in the United States, toasted “the American people, the African people, the promise and potential of our partnership”.
Senegal’s President Macky Sall, who also chairs the African Union, raised his glass to him for the “strengthening of American-African friendship”, before a dinner of squash soup, crab, pan-fried fish and banana pudding .
Before the festivities, the American president had brought together the leaders of six African countries (Gabon, Nigeria, Liberia, Sierra Leone, Madagascar and the Democratic Republic of the Congo) where elections will be held next year, which the United States will closely monitor. .
The United States will be careful that they are “free, fair and credible”, had already warned a presidential adviser, Jake Sullivan, on Monday.
Joe Biden will again take part in the summit on Thursday, which for its last day will be devoted to food insecurity aggravated by the war in Ukraine.
The American president notably welcomed on Wednesday the nearly 15 billion dollars in contracts promised on the sidelines of the summit by the American and African private sector in a whole series of fields including high technology.
The United States, for its part, has announced that it will invest $350 million for the development of digital technology on the continent.
Among the announcements, credit card leader Visa intends to invest $1 billion for online payment in Africa, an area where China is a leader, while giant Microsoft announced a program to facilitate Internet access via satellite for 10 million people worldwide, half of them in Africa.
This project should make it possible to bring internet access for the first time to remote regions of Egypt, Senegal and Angola, Microsoft president Brad Smith told AFP.
In addition, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken participated in a signing ceremony for a $504 million agreement with Benin and Niger to link the port of Cotonou to Niger’s landlocked capital, Niamey.
“These projects will bear the hallmark of America’s partnership,” Blinken noted.
“They will be transparent, of high quality and they will be judged by the people they serve,” he added in a thinly veiled allusion to China, which the United States accuses of lacking transparency. and increase the debt burden of African countries.