For its Africa influence, the US should go green

Focused on war in Europe, the administration of President Joe Biden has paid comparatively little attention to the US’s relations with Africa. Yet deeper US engagement with the planet’s most youthful and fastest-growing continent is essential to global stability. Biden can both meet Africa’s needs and advance US security interests by focusing on the biggest threat to Africa’s future: climate change.
Biden took office pledging to make Africa a bigger foreign-policy priority. Biden addressed the African Union shortly after his inauguration and dispatched Secretary of State Antony Blinken on a five-day trip to sub-Saharan Africa last November. The administration’s actions, however, have fallen short of its rhetoric. The continent accounts for not much above 1% of US bilateral trade and a sliver of its overall foreign direct investment. US efforts lag China’s, whose bilateral trade with Africa was roughly 4% of its total last year, or more than $250 billion. Russia has also expanded its presence in Africa, forging military assistance partnerships with at least 30 governments on the continent worth $12 billion.
The response of African leaders to the war in Ukraine underscores the costs of Western inattention. Nearly half of the continent’s 54 countries declined to endorse the United Nations resolution condemning Russia’s invasion. The risk of social and political unrest caused by rising food and fuel prices may further erode support for tougher Western sanctions against Russia.
In February, the European Union announced the creation of a $170 billion fund to support infrastructure projects in Africa. A similar US initiative called Prosper Africa, set up under Donald Trump’s administration to support US investment and counter Beijing’s commercial efforts, has made progress, but not enough.
The lack of a US strategy for Africa is a missed opportunity — not only to check Chinese and Russian influence, but to simultaneously advance climate and security goals. Helping Africa’s population of more than 1 billion mitigate and adapt to global warming would reduce the likelihood of conflicts over dwindling natural resources. In advance of a planned summit with African leaders later this year, Biden should lay out a climate-focused agenda that partners with governments and the African diaspora to take full advantage of the continent’s abundant resources.
First, that means supporting clean energy on the continent that has the richest solar potential, but only 1% of global solar capacity. Financing from the US International Development Finance Corporation should be expanded to bolster power generation, storage and transmission.

—Bloomberg