Kamala Harris builds Africa team to upgrade approach to continent

Vice President Harris is the most senior U.S. official to visit Africa during the Biden administration with her visit last year to Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia. She also hosted several Africa leaders as VP and has overseen several US-Africa initiatives including private sector investments in climate adaptation; empowering African women; and digital inclusion. The president also assigned Harris to oversee the rollout of the first African Diaspora Engagement advisory council.

“Understanding what Biden was able to do [on Africa policy] with the vice president as a key conduit, I’m just more than confident that when she’s president, we’ll be able to do much more,” said Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, a Democrat who sits on the US House of Representatives’ subcommittee on Africa.

One of the early “easy” targets for people close to the Africa team would be to codify the US-Africa Leaders Summit so that it is a regular fixture on the White House calendar regardless of who’s in office. Biden hosted leaders from 49 countries in December 2022 at the summit. The previous summit had been in 2014.

Africa watchers are also hopeful that Harris will visit the continent early on if she becomes president to make clear that Africa is more of a priority as the US finds itself falling well behind China in being a meaningful economic and developmental partner to most countries on the continent.

Biden is not set to visit the continent until after the election. Devastating hurricanes in the US southeast delayed a planned visit to Angola until early December.

Foreign policy is usually low on the laundry list of American voters’ top concerns. And even when it is an issue, Africa is almost never discussed outside of some sort of real or perceived imminent security threat.

But what long-time Africa watchers, both Democrats and Republicans, have been arguing for some time now is that viewing Africa simply through a security or aid lens is outdated. Africa, they note, is too obviously important to the future of the global economic, climate, and demographic order to maintain that perspective.

Until recently, the only way Africa has been able to grab the attention of key players in Washington, particularly during the Trump years, was to invoke the inexorable rise of China’s presence and influence across the continent.

After a period of US officials blaming China for “debt traps” during the Trump years, the Biden administration has taken a slightly different tack. It has focused much of its Africa efforts on the multibillion-dollar Lobito Corridor infrastructure project, which connects the Lobito port in Angola to the green mineral mines of Zambia and DR Congo by rail and by telecommunications and so much more.

Harris supporters often suggest that she’ll care more about Africa than Biden because she is a member of the Black diaspora. That’s certainly not a given. But then again, the first time I noticed the VP show that unbridled “joy” with which she launched her campaign was on her trip to Ghana. Maybe that matters.

Africa watchers in the Democratic Party are often very critical of Trump for his self-evident disdain towards the continent. But close watchers at think tanks around DC and on the continent will often remind you that the Trump administration developed two influential Africa-focused initiatives.

In December 2018, Trump launched Prosper Africa to open markets for US businesses, grow Africa’s middle class and enable competition with China and other nations with business interests in Africa.

The Trump administration also created the US International Development Finance Corp (DFC) with a maximum contingent liability of $60 billion, double its predecessor. Africa remains DFC’s largest regional portfolio, accounting for more than a quarter of the $12 billion it invested in 180 projects around the world in the 12 months to Sept. 30.