VP Harris starts visits to three African countries Sunday in latest US outreach

US Vice President Kamala Harris will become the highest-ranking Biden administration official to visit Africa when she begins a tour of Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia on Sunday.

Harris will focus on strengthening partnerships, security and economic prosperity, her office said, with analysts adding that her mere presence – as the first female vice president who has ancestral ties to the continent – is significant in itself. Her visit to Africa is widely seen as part of the United States’ charm offensive in the continent launched by the Biden administration as it seeks to offset growing Chinese and Russian influence there. During the three-country tour of Africa, the United States will seek to pitch itself as a better partner than China, which has invested heavily in the continent over several decades.

In a tacit reference to Republican President Donald Trump’s ignorance of the continent, a senior US official told reporters that the United States now wants “to dismantle long-held and often outdated notions of what it means to live, work and invest in Africa.” Harris “believes African innovation and ideas will shape the future of the world,” the official added.

Preceding the vice president, who lands Sunday (26 March) in Ghana for the first stop, five of President Joe Biden’s cabinet secretaries and First Lady Jill Biden have made trips to Africa. Harris’ journey, which will take her to Tanzania and then Zambia, has a special poignancy. She is the first Black person and woman ever as a US vice president, who had moreover visited Zambia as a young girl, when her maternal Indian-born grandfather worked there.

Harris plans to meet with President Nana Akufo-Addo of Ghana, President Samia Suluhu Hassan of Tanzania, and President Hakainde Hichilema of Zambia — leaders she met with in Washington in December during the Africa Leaders Summit.