Africa needs Biden to have a wider vision, a ‘PEPFAR’ for our time

I have it on good authority that Secretary of State Antony Blinken planned his July trip to Africa to release the U.S. Strategy towards Sub-Saharan Africa long before Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov made his four-country Africa tour to woo African allies in the face of Russia’s international isolation. And I know firsthand that U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield’s trip to Ghana to thank the nation for its support at the U.N. Security Council to condemn Russian aggression in Ukraine was disconnected from the Kremlin’s opportunistic appeal.

While the Biden Africa strategy comes in the wake of Russian aggression, not to mention the decades of corrupt and coercive economic exploitation by China, it is not driven by it; rather, it is a thoughtful plan, delivered by an administration whose senior leadership clearly cares about the continent and recognizes its centrality to America’s national security.

I give the Biden administration credit for showing up in Africa at a time when Washington is consumed with the crisis in Ukraine and for setting the second U.S. Africa Leader’s Summit, to be held in December in Washington, D.C., which will be a demonstrable commitment of the United States to the continent.

I applaud the administration for recognizing that African economies have suffered disproportionately from the COVID-19 pandemic and the breakdown in global supply chains; for accepting that the goals of COP26 must allow for a just energy transition. and for citing  Afrobarometer data affirming that Africans believe democracy is preferable to all other forms of government.

And finally, well-done for the programmatic interventions, including the G7 Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII), the reboot of Prosper Africa, Power Africa 2.0, the expansion  of Feed the Future, a soon-to-be-announced initiative for digital transformation, and the implementation of the recent Global Fragility Act.

Unfortunately, however well-intentioned, the plan is constrained by a lack of dedicated budget and largely characterized by marginal policy shifts when every global and demographic trend — from migration to climate change, to pandemic preparedness and population growth — demands a strategic pivot with fully-funded interventions. In short, we need a PEPFAR for our time.

PEPFAR, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, was established in 2003 under the George W. Bush administration to respond to the global HIV/AIDs crisis. PEPFAR has since been funded by ten U.S. Congresses and implemented by four presidential administrations, saving an estimated 21 million lives, supporting countries to achieve HIV epidemic control, and most recently, providing the backbone infrastructure for the COVID-19 pandemic response. 

The much anticipated PGII — the re-branded White House “Build Back Better World” program — could have been a PEPFAR-like moment for the Biden administration to help close the multi-trillion dollar infrastructure gap in the developing world and provide an alternative to Chinese-backed predatory lending. But the $600 billion goal set over five years, of which the U.S. has made a commitment of one third, is an unfunded mandate built on a promise to leverage private sector funding, without offering any new financing vehicles, besides the newly constituted International Development Finance Corporation. 

Closing the infrastructure gap will be essential to the success of the African Continental Free Trade Agreement, which represents the clearest path yet to the economic empowerment of the continent. The AfCTA will create the largest free trade area in the world, connecting 1.3 billion people across 55 countries with a combined gross domestic product valued at $3.4 trillion. It has the potential to lift 30 million people out of extreme poverty. The AfCTA will require regulation, standardization, improved governance, innovation, and encourage cross-border competition.

Africa’s population is growing faster than jobs are being created, and whether the trend continues or can be reversed will determine if the continent realizes prosperity or instability in the coming decades. U.S. national security, not to mention the health of our planet, is at stake — and we need to rise to the moment.

The U.S. and the G-7 need to take the PGII back to their budgetary drawing boards and bring in the multilateral and bilateral lending agencies to think crisis prevention, on the scale of Ukraine. You can’t trade on a landmass of more than 30 million square kilometers — enough to cover the U.S., China, India, Japan, Mexico and much of Europe combined — if you can’t connect people, goods and services — and that means roads, waterways, bridges, airports, energy, and digitization.

Secondly, the Biden administration needs to articulate an ambitious, forwarding-thinking Africa trade policy and press it to Congress. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), which has been the centerpiece of US-Africa economic engagement for the last two decades, is nearing the end of its authorization. It provides eligible sub-Saharan African countries with duty-free access to the U.S. market for over 1,800 products. This is in addition to the more than 5,000 other products that are eligible for duty-free access under the Generalized System of Preferences program.

What is the administration’s plan to assure continuity of investment, to address market disparities, to distinguish between fragile states and those approaching a near middle income, and to provide a bridge to Africa’s anchor economies?

Meanwhile, the promise of a Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Kenya and the United States, one which would have served as a model for Africa, was not fulfilled. Instead, we have the U.S. Kenya Trade and Investment Partnership, a non-binding framework agreement, much to the disappointment of the Kenyans.

No vague promises of future billions will offer a true alternative to China’s largesse, much less power the AfCTA’s ambition to lift 30 million from poverty through trade and investment.

And no U.S. emergency humanitarian assistance program, however generous, will fill the void of a bold U.S. trade agenda and its potential to drive private sector-led growth in Africa and at home.

As for me, I’m not discouraged — at least not yet. The Africa Leaders’ Summit is four months away. There’s still time.

K. Riva Levinson is president and CEO of KRL International LLC, a D.C.-based consultancy that works in the world’s emerging markets, award-winning author of “Choosing the Hero: My Improbable Journey and the Rise of Africa’s First Woman President” (Kiwai Media, June 2016). You can follow her @rivalevinson