The Vice President will be visiting Africa next week

President Barack Obama and the World Affairs Council: The Road to a Stronger Future. A First Look at the Promises of Africa with the President’s Summit

Joyce M. Davis is the president and CEO of the World Affairs Council of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. She worked for various media organizations around the world, including National Public Radio, Knight Ridder Newspapers, and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty. The opinions are of her own. CNN has more opinion.

Forty-nine nations have been invited to the President’s summit in Washington this week. But Biden knows a photo op around a banquet table with African leaders won’t make up for the time the US has foolishly squandered since 2014, when President Barack Obama held the first US-Africa summit at the White House. That brought hope for a new, stronger relationship, which just didn’t happen. This week is a chance to change that.

China and Russia have increased investments and presence in the region because of the Biden administration push. Having high-level officials such as Harris visit helps present a different picture to the rest of the world.

Ever the pragmatist, Macron simply did the math: There are over one billion people in Africa, which is the fastest growing population on the planet. It’s also among the youngest, with 15.7 being the median age. Africa’s young population can be seen as poised to make their mark on the world economically and politically.

Yes, Africa still has wars, natural disasters, and brutal dictators, like other continents. It also has industries related to minerals and natural resources. There is a growing population of Americans and a vibrant music and film industry that is impacting world culture.

Biden said that improving Africa’s infrastructure was essential to the vision of building a stronger global economy.

The US-African High-Energy Policy Summit, Washington, Jan. 12, 2019: Africa in the Light of Recent Developments

The leaders of four nations were excluded from the summit invite list. Some of the countries on the planet will be represented, some with poor human rights records. The gathering is one of the largest collection of foreign leaders in Washington in recent years, and has led to traffic jams and tightened security for the dozens of motorcades and officials.

On Thursday, Sullivan said the program would begin and end with a discussion on food security and food systems resilience, which he said has been disproportionately affected by Russia.

It’s not a one-way street. It isn’t about solutions. And it’s not just about foreign aid or humanitarian assistance,” a senior administration official said. “It’s about mutual investment and mutual economic growth and creative partnerships and deep people-to-people connections between the American people and the people on the African continent.”

“We see Russia continuing to peddle cheap weapons,” US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday at a summit session. Russia is destabilizing as well because it is employing mercenaries across the continent.

Sullivan said that the Summit had to take a step back in order to acknowledge Africa’s importance to the world. The future will not be just for the African people, but for the world as well.

The first Black vice president, Harris, will give remarks regarding the brutality of slavery and the African diaspora when he visits the Cape Coast Slave Castle in West Africa.

First lady Jill Biden went to Namibia and Kenya earlier this month and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken went to Ethiopia and Niger last week. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited Senegal, Zambia and South Africa this year, too.

“We want to build self-reliance,” a U.S. ambassador to Tanzania said in a conference titled ‘In the Changing era of the Cold War’

In her discussions with leaders, students and business owners, Harris intends to talk about issues related to democracy, technology, economic growth, food security, and Russia’s war in Ukraine, officials said.

China and Russia try “to build dependency,” said Mark Green, a former ambassador to Tanzania who was head of the U.S. Agency for International Development during the Trump administration. “We seek to build self-reliance,” Green said in an interview.

Green said the U.S. needs to listen to the needs of the leaders in Africa, instead of focusing on U.S. strategy.

“Whenever you say ‘strategic’ or whenever you talk about China, the natural reaction for Africans is, ‘OK, well, this isn’t about us, it’s about somebody else,'” Green said.