My Take | No shortage of reasons why those in Africa prefer China over West
- Brutal colonisation, Cold War proxy conflicts, general neglect and now hypocritical opportunism against Chinese and Russians are just a few
A headline in Foreign Policy cracks me up. It reads: “Can [Kamala] Harris’ visit shore up US relations with Africa?”
If the writer and editors didn’t already know the answer, maybe they shouldn’t be working for a publication with such a title. After all, Africans have been making it loud and clear what they think about Western leaders queuing to visit and lecture them about democracy and “warn” them about the dangers of evil China and Russia.
But as they say, “it is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it”. So the issues have to be presented by the magazine as complicated, and that non-specialists may not easily understand them or their full implications.
The US vice-president has just wrapped up her three-nation Africa mission. She was the 18th American official to visit the continent this year alone, if you can believe it. I suppose if Washington had to keep sending its most senior officials, the Africans must not be getting the message. Or is it the other way around?
Standing beside Harris in a joint news conference, the president of Ghana Nana Akufo-Addo said: “There may be an obsession in America about the Chinese activities on the continent but there is no such obsession here. China is one of many countries with whom Ghana is engaged. Your country [the US] is one of them. Virtually all countries in the world are friends of Ghana.”