During U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken recent visit to the African continent, he unveiled a strategy document framing Washington’s new approach to relations with Africans. But the lofty ambition expressed in the document is unlikely to be realized, due to contradictions between Washington’s words and actions.
Last week, Kigali played host to the second Kigali Global Dialogue, which brought together more than 150 people from 45 countries to ponder solutions to critical issues the world faces. For countries in the Global South, the conference sought to ponder how they can navigate development challenges amid great-power competition.
In March, environmentalists launched an unprecedented legal case charging French oil giant TotalEnergies with greenwashing. Despite marketing itself as a green company, TotalEnergies has invested heavily in the East African Crude Oil Pipeline, or EACOP, an infamous project in Uganda that’s come to symbolize Western hypocrisy.
Antony Blinken was in Africa this week for a three-country tour, where he unveiled the Biden administration’s new approach for deepening ties with African nations. The strategy seems to hit all the right notes. But to implement it, the U.S. will have to break long-established habits in its relations with the continent.
As inflation rates spike and interest rates rise, many countries are facing looming sovereign debt crises. A mechanism like the G-20’s Common Framework for Debt Treatments, aimed at addressing what could become a global debt crisis, is becoming more important than ever—but to be effective it needs to address major shortcomings.
Peace in Bosnia has been bought at a high price for the EU and the local population. In ignoring growing signs of corruption, the EU allowed structural dysfunction to fester. The system put in place by the Dayton Agreement may have been necessary to end war in the 1990s. But 30 years later, Bosnia is a different place.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken is using his visit to Africa to unveil Washington’s new approach to relations with the continent. That approach will be hampered by Washington’s deafness to long-standing complaints on a range of issues from many African countries, and its blindness to its own hypocrisy toward the continent.