 The Joe Biden administration made a fresh bid to reach out to African leaders during the U.S. African Leaders Summit held in Washington, D.C. from December 13 to 15. The summit takes place at a time when both China and Russia have established different kinds of presence in Africa. The U.S. government tried to give the impression that the summit was not about its international rivals, but the subtext was clearly there. How do current geopolitical and economic developments influence the U.S. outreach to African countries? What were some of the key announcements and outcomes of the summit? Well, for the United States, it was a wake-up call when the heads of government of Africa didn't support or line up behind the U.S. position regarding the war on Ukraine. Many of them took quite independent positions. Several heads of government went to Moscow in this intervening several months. Even countries that were quite closely aligned to the United States didn't take the U.S. position in public. Many of them wanted to essentially have a kind of non-aligned view between the Russians and the United States. Well, it's true, of course, that the U.S. has watched with some alarm over the course of the past several years, maybe six years or so, that China has increased its investments on the African continent. It's a principal investor on the continent about four times greater by volume than U.S. investments and a different character of investment because a lot of Chinese investment is in infrastructure building, whereas a lot of U.S. investment is in fact in extractive industries. So, the U.S. has been alarmed by this. They've also been alarmed by the entry of several hundred Russian mercenaries associated largely with the Wagner Group, not only in Mozambique, but in the Democratic Republic of Congo, in Libya, and in most recently Burkina Faso. So, the U.S. has been pretty alert to this because they kind of thought that the African continent, the U.S. and France has a kind of lock on it, but not so. In fact, a number of African states are asserting their independence. They don't want to be either the front or backyard of the United States, France or Russia or China. They want to assert their own independence. And so, as a way to reassert their independence or, well, putting it in another way to recolonize Africa, the United States had a white paper out strategic document which talked about the strategy for U.S. to assert its control. And then in mid-December, three days summit, the U.S. Africa summit held in Washington where they sat and discussed a range of things, including the problems of food price inflation and, of course, the issue of Russia and China. Strikingly, the most important issue to African countries since 60 percent of them are struggling with a very, very dangerous debt crisis. That issue of debt was not on the table. It was not discussed by anybody. It was all about, in a way, the new Cold War. It was all about the United States trying to reassert itself as the principle power on the African continent. In the last day, the United States decided to pledge $55 billion to the African continent. That's roughly $1 billion per country. It's interesting when you look at the character of the aid. Well, there was about $150 for elections. This was comical. On Wednesday, one of the days of the summit, Mr. Biden took aside several leaders of countries who were going to come up for elections and basically apparently lectured them on the importance of free and fair elections. A very curious thing that happened. One of the people taken aside was Mohammed Buhari of Nigeria, an expert in how to win elections. And these were all men, octogenarians, non-togenarians, who have not really had a free, fair election in a long time. It was curious that the US decided to pull this public relations move against them. Curious because you're not going to make friends like that. But anyway, that's a separate issue. The bulk of the money pledged, in fact, for combating food insecurity. Look to me to be in the realm of public-private partnerships. This was going to be money that essentially would subsidize US multinational corporations to enter and take advantage of African soil and African markets. Didn't look to me like an investment program for the African continent. Look more like a subsidy program for US multinationals. But of course, that's not how it's being reported in the press. They just have the banner number, 55 billion, as if that's a lot of money. In fact, that's not a very great deal of money for a very large continent with a great deal of complicated problems who are trying to manage their own foreign policy between the United States, Russia and China. They really don't want to get caught up in the ugly choices of this new Cold War. For countries of the diverse continent, there are tough choices to make. On the one hand, there is a groundswell of people's anger against the presence of Western troops in many countries. At the same time, the US seeks to intensify its military and strategic presence in the continent. Meanwhile, China's presence has been marked by a focused economic plan for many countries, which is an attractive offer for them. How do governments manage to strike a balance between various foreign players even while dealing with pressures from their population against militarization and imperialism? Africa is a very diverse continent. Many different currents taking place in the Sahel region, in Mali, in Burkina Faso and so on. We've seen a real rising up of people against the French intervention through Operation Barkhane. The French have been essentially removed from Mali and Burkina Faso. On the other side in Ghana, we see the entry of the United States taking over a terminal in Accra's airport. We see the entry most likely of UK troops into Ghana through the Accra initiative. Very strange different things happening in different parts of the continent. But let's focus on Zambia, which has been an interesting place. High debt problems. Once again, back to the International Monetary Fund. The Chinese government came in and basically tore up pieces of paper for loans, some loans were forgiven and so on. And then in the middle of all this, the Zambian government decides to cut a deal with the Democratic Republic of Congo and the United States around basically battery making. Now, what's interesting is the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia already had an agreement to do some sort of collaborative work on creating an electric battery. There was no need for the US to be part of this deal. But the US inserted itself. This shows the political weakness in some of these countries. Here was a situation where both the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia already had an agreement, already had a plan to build an electric battery supply chain and so on. They would have perhaps done it on their own. And yet here the United States, in a sense, really frustrated by the Chinese entry into these countries, inserts itself. And I would say armed to Zambia and Democratic Republic of Congo to allow a new agreement to be created, which is between the three countries. So that's a sign of the weakness of countries. Again, it's a patchy situation in some countries. They're ejecting like the French. In other countries, they are forced to bring in the United States. So I mean, we have to look and see. It's very difficult to generalize, as you said.