Author: Giza Mdoe

Ahead of the US-Africa Summit in December, the Russia-Africa Summit next year and as new geopolitical alliances form, Africa is under great pressure to take sides. China is increasingly becoming a strong economic powerhouse while Russia is making its own stand. The West finds itself reliving history, scrambling for portions of Africa. This summer was most fulfilling for me, not because the Earth’s revolution had finally brought the sun to shine on my part of the World, I live in Tanzania, East Africa, its spring and summer all year around. Africa is under increasing pressure to take sides in new…

Meanwhile, Africa is looking to take pre-emptive action to avert the inevitable food crisis.

The United States has pledged support to help the continent grow and distribute more food. The aid will come through the African Development Bank (AfDB). The Bank is looking to fund a significant increase in food production in an effort to ward off the food crisis wrought by the Russia-Ukraine war.

In May this year, the AfDB set up a US$1.5 billion African Emergency Food Production Facility. It was established with the aim of supporting some 20 million smallholder farmers produce more food and to do so more sustainably.

The connection bypass road launched by the five presidents of the East African Community (EAC) has set precedence in the importance of neighbouring countries undertaking joint projects to improve transport infrastructure between and amongst themselves.

This point is underlined in the World Bank report; “Patterns of shipping, transshipping, and distribution mean that trade depends not only on the quality of infrastructure in the two trading countries but also of that in key third party countries on the trading network.”

The point is that while two countries can come together to improve transport infrastructure, it is not enough because trade, in many cases, goes much further than the border between two countries.

The goal of JETP is to help South Africa decarbonise and switch to renewable energy for its power needs as aligned in the country’s Nationally Determined Contribution emissions goals.

Through the program, South Africa will mobilise an initial commitment of $8.5 billion for the first phase of financing, which has now been secured and whose distribution plan will be announced next month in Egypt at the COP27.

“The Partnership is expected to prevent up to 1-1.5 gigatonnes of emissions over the next 20 years and support South Africa to move away from coal and to accelerate its transition to a low emission, climate resilient economy,”  reports the European Commission.

Pundits advise that the US is better off supporting the African Union’s Agenda 2063 even though the US strategy is exclusive for Sub-Saharan Africa. However, that part of Africa is still accounted for in the continent-wide Agenda 2063. It would bode well for all parties concerned if US support to Sub Sahara Africa served to help the region better place itself in the overall African vision.

There is the matter of friend-shoring as well, Africa feels the US gave Asia a much better deal, more explicit, more concrete, specific and committed than it ever did with the motherland. How will it play out? Will the US-China trade war help Africa secure a better deal from China than the US?

Even though the strategy does mention a willingness to facilitate ‘new geographic groupings’, it is not specific as to what these new alliances are and what they will mean in terms of trade and even security.

Yes, there is the mention of integrating African states in the overall Indian Ocean and Indo-Pacific forums, but that only spells out the obvious, ‘the U.S. would like to have Africa on its side in its ongoing trade tug of war with China in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific.

Russia war on Ukraine worsening inflation in Europe US offers list of commitments to Asia in friend-shoring deal  Africa needs to stand up to get a better friend-shoring deal Balance of power is shifting globally, fueled by the corona pandemic and the Russia-Ukraine war, pre-existing trade wars between super powers China and US have only worsened; where does this shift of power and political rift leave Africa. All the fighting is not good for business, unless of course your business is in military contracts. So many nations are, and understandably so, avoiding conflict regions and diverting their supply chains to friendly…

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