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Biden to hold Africa summit to boost US ties: Blinken


By AFP
Published : 19 Nov 2021 10:06 PM

United States President Joe Biden plans to hold a summit with African leaders to show Washington’s commitment to the continent, Secretary of State Antony Blinken has said.

Blinken made the announcement on Friday from the Nigerian capital of Abuja, his second stop on a three-country tour of sub-Saharan Africa that began in Nairobi, Kenya and will end in Dakar, Senegal.

 “President Biden intends to host the US-Africa Leaders Summit to drive the kind of high-level diplomacy and engagement that can transform relationships and make effective cooperation possible,” Blinken said.

Blinken, who is on his first visit to sub-Saharan Africa as secretary of state and is the highest-ranking Biden administration official to visit the region, did not give a date for the summit.

However, on Friday, delivering a speech to the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), Blinken vowed an overhaul of the US approach to Africa that will treat the continent as a “major geopolitical power” and that will boost development without the “strings” often attached to such deals.

“Too often, international infrastructure deals are opaque, coercive. They burden countries with unmanageable debt,” he said. “They’re environmentally destructive. They don’t always benefit the people who actually live there.”

“We will do things differently.”