US charm offensive in Africa: new bureau for global health & summit with African youth leaders

The Biden administration’s charm offensive with Africa is ramping up in a big way, most recently with the launch of a new bureau aimed at making the battle against global outbreaks a lasting priority of US foreign policy and a pledge to seek partnership with African youth leaders to meet today’s challenges.

Widely interpreted as being a part of the US charm offensive in Africa to counter Russia and China, the State Department has launched a new bureau aimed at making the battle against global outbreaks a lasting priority of US foreign policy. The bureau is to include the 20-year-old initiative known as the President’s Emergency Program for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR that has succeeded beyond most early expectations in addressing the AIDS crisis and is credited with saving up to 25 million lives worldwide. The bureau will be led by a Cameroon-born public health official, John Nkengasong who founded the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention operations in Africa. The lessons learned from the US HIV program “are applied daily” in dealing with other threats, Nkengasong said at the opening.

Meanwhile, speaking at a closing ceremony of The Mandela Washington Fellowship Summit in Washington, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told young leaders from Africa last week that collaboration as equal partners is necessary to meet today’s challenges of food security, preventing conflict, combating climate change, and slowing the spread of disease. “Our countries, the United States, our partners in Africa, we can only meet today’s challenges. We can only actually deliver results for our people if we collaborate as equal partners,” Blinken said. The mission of the summit, which brought together nearly 700 of Sub-Saharan Africa’s promising young leaders, is to build relationships that will expand US organizations’ impact and outreach in Africa.