Joe Biden’s overdue trip to Africa in final weeks of his presidency shows how out of touch the US is there
Joe Biden is on a trip to Angola that the US State Department is calling “historic”.
This is the first time a sitting US president has visited sub-Saharan Africa in close to a decade.
But rather than salvage his legacy in Africa, the trip has cemented that the US is not only losing influence here – it is also violently out of touch.
As Mr Biden landed in Angola‘s capital Luanda, news broke that deadly missiles targeted displaced communities in the famine-ridden Zamzam camp in North Darfur, Sudan.
The culprits are a paramilitary group born out of the janjaweed militias that terrorised Darfur in the early 2000s.
Engaged in a brutal war with Sudan’s army for territorial control, the Rapid Support Forces is accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity across the country.
As a senator, Joe Biden called immediate intervention in Darfur “a moral obligation.”
As president, he designated the United Arab Emirates, the main alleged backers of the Rapid Support Forces, a “major defence partner”.
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His envoys have failed to bring Sudan’s warring parties to the negotiation table and neutralise a key US ally as the world’s largest humanitarian crisis continues to escalate.
In May, Mr Biden hosted Kenyan President William Ruto in the White House. It was the first visit for an African leader since 2008.
As Mr Ruto and Mr Biden exchanged niceties and celebrated 60 years of US-Kenya partnership, the Kenyan people were rising up against rampant government corruption.
Weeks later when Kenya police landed in Haiti to head up a US-led and funded peace-keeping mission, Kenyan police were shooting peaceful protesters dead in Nairobi.
In Angola too, anti-government protesters have been shot and killed in the capital in the weeks before Mr Biden’s visit.
Kenyan President William Ruto (left) at a White House state dinner with Joe Biden in May. Pic: Reuters
Competition with China and Russia for Africa’s loyalty
Rather than make up for missteps and counter-productive conflict intervention, this visit to Angola feels like an attempt to get ahead in a Cold-War-like competition with China and Russia for Africa’s economic loyalty.
In a State Department press call before the visit, a senior administration official clearly outlined the purpose of the trip was to provide an alternative to challenge Chinese investment.
Angola’s biggest trading partners are currently China and India. China has overtaken the US as Africa’s key trading partner since 2013.
The US has lost influence militarily in Africa too. It has lost a major drone base in Agadez, Niger, with US troops kicked out of the country and neighbouring Chad.
President Joe Biden shakes hands with Angolan President Joao Manuel Goncalves in Luanda. Pic: Reuters
American global security experts have watched as flailing US foreign policy has morphed into one big failure under Mr Biden.
“This is the first visit of a sitting US president to Sub-Saharan Africa since 2015, and it comes by a lame duck whose pardons are now more prominent than his policies,” says Ian Ralby, maritime security expert and chief executive of IR Consilium.
“It is a clear demonstration of the American failure to recognise the future of global demographics – and therefore economics – originate in Africa.
“If the US were really competing, rather than talking about ‘great power competition,’ visits to Africa would be routine.”
As an overdue, postponed trip in the final weeks of his presidency – overshadowed by news of him pardoning his son – the Biden administration in Africa has gone out with a self-interested squelch rather than a bang.
