Chethana Janith, Jadetimes Staff
C. Janith is a Jadetimes news reporter covering science and geopolitics.
Summits in the east (Beijing, and Vladivostok) occurring in early September 2024 featured participants planning how to meet their developmental needs as opposed to recent ones in the west, (Washington, and Rome), which featured participants ignoring their needs to try to rule the world despite being a minority.
Both the Forum for China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) and Eastern Economic Forum of September 2024 featured participants discussing ways of developing infrastructural and trade in their countries, while the recent US-Africa Summit 2022, and G7-2024 featured attendants expressing their perceived right to rule the rest of the world, while using Africans as cheerleaders. This article investigates which between western and eastern summits give adequate attention to Africa’s developmental needs, while proposing practical steps to meet such needs. It also compares the summits’ conveners to find out which between them offers practical partnership for Africa’s development journey.
Summits in the West; US-Africa Summit 2022, and G7-Italia 2024
The US–Africa 2022 summit featured President Joe Biden stating how his country needed to partner with Africans to fight pandemics, lower food prices, and tackle climate change. Therefore, Washington invited Africans to ignore their long-term challenges of underdevelopment in infrastructure, manufacturing, healthcare, and education, and instead concentrate on its vague vision. The pandemic that Biden referred to had already ended, revealing deliberate efforts to distract Africans with trivia. Still, Biden did not outline practical steps for lowering food prices. Furthermore, his inviting Africa’s partnership to fight climate change displays a desire to sidetrack Africa’s development, since the continent has contributed minimally in creating the challenge, and has equally limited ability to address it. Generally, Biden displayed Washington’s predisposition for enabling its huge multinational corporations to sign potentially unequal trade deals with African states. He gleefully mentioned the presence of ‘Prosper Africa’ Deal Room where Multinationals were signing agreements with African leaders, just like the past European imperial companies for instance the British East India, or the French Mississipi Company signed deals with native tribal chiefs who only realized later that they had given their peoples for colonization.
Biden invited Africa to be a cheerleader to Washington’s diversionary initiatives, while ignoring its pressing developmental needs. American’s desire to use Africa is also reflected during William Ruto’s state visit to the United States in May 2024, as Kenya’s president outlined how the bilateral meeting was meant to build global leadership and partnership to address global challenges such as conflicts, climate change, and debt distress. How the US and Kenya, out of about 200 countries globally, should develop leadership for the world sounds like pure imperialism. It will be interesting to see how Kenya can “address global challenges” without developing its economy, while the US has failed to address such challenges both at home and abroad in its decades of being the world’s largest economy, making the stated aim of the bilateral meeting above diversionary at best. Kenya’s president held this view when he was invited to Italy in June 2024 to attend the G7 summit to lead the world. However, his tone in FOCAC-2024 reveals a completely new set of needs for Africans, suggesting that he was playing along with Washington’s and Italy’s choreography in the West’s summits.
Africans in the G7-2024 were treated as pawns without any interests for their populations. They were nudged to act like low-level members of the western imperialist gang. The Kenyan president in attendance did not mention his country’s needs, but repeated the west’s stand on conflicts in Eastern Europe, Gaza, and Sudan. Similarly, the G7 conveners did not recognize Africa’s developmental requirements or propose steps to address them. Instead, they would only condemn Russia, while skirting the Israeli genocide in Gaza despite their being primarily NATO members and hence parties to both conflicts. The entire spectacle illustrated the west’s enthusiasm to lead developing countries in a futile cacophony of blaming its competitors as opposed to genuinely spurring development in Africa. Western leaders’ proposition in such summits is not surprising, as they have a history of colonialism, slavery, and are ideologically inclined to appropriate other peoples’ economic and political resources for their own selfish ends.
Summits in the East; FOCAC 2024 and others
FOCAC 2024 unfolded as a forum for the Chinese host and African guests to discuss practical solutions to their developmental needs. The host, Chinese President Xi Jingping set the tone by declaring that development is an inalienable right for all peoples, in a stark contrast to westerners who always hint to Africans to stop developing and join in addressing the west’s poorly defined «global challenges». This statement was loaded with meaning, especially for Africans and Asians, whose production and trade patterns were disrupted during western exploration and plunder and subsequent colonization and neocolonization. Readers should note that the east African coast, for instance, had thriving spice production and trade before the Portuguese ruined it through wars of plunder, which was followed by British and German colonialism that worsened everything. The Chinese president would proceed to outline solid developmental programs, including opening new trade opportunities for Least Developed Countries (LDCs) in Africa. He also pledged to loan $51 billion to Africans without political strings attached, and $10 billion in grants. After Xi, other speakers, including the presidents of Kenya, Nigeria, and Tanzania, restricted themselves to discussing matters of infrastructural development in the countries represented.
China’s huge investment expands programs that had been discussed in previous FOCAC editions, and which have been implemented, including Kenya’s Standard Gauge Railway (SGR), the Nairobi Express Way, and Lamu Port among others. Additionally, the 2024 FOCAC edition saw China committing to funding other projects including expansion of rural road network, provision of equipment for vocational training centers, and funding new bypasses to decongest road sections in Kenya’s capital and nearby towns. Also, discussions in the summit suggested that Africa may have a rail link joining the Indian Ocean to the Atlantic, by expanding Kenya’s SGR project to Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and the Republic of Congo. The proposed line will invigorate African economies and expand trade between West Africa and Asia. In addition, a road project previously awarded to a French company that has faced endless delays may be awarded to the Chinese. Heads of states in the FOCAC displayed remarkable consistency in only discussing issues of interest to them. Similarly, other summits that occurred alongside FOCAC- Russia’s Eastern Economic Forum, and Russia-Mongolia summit-featured participants discussing how to meet their economic and infrastructural needs.
Africa’s Needs
Eastern summits give adequate attention to Africa’s developmental needs and outline practical steps to address some of them. On the contrary, those in the west invite Africans to ignore development and to become pawns in the west’s hopeless effort to rule the world. FOCAC-2024 displayed members giving central attention to Africa’s developmental needs, and depicted China implementing tangible steps including issuing huge loans, proposing investments, and removing barriers to trade for Africa’s LDCs and hence expanding trade with China. As a result, Summits in the east have demonstrated their suitability for Africa’s current and future developmental needs. Conveners in the east have also emerged as reliable partners, offering a platform where developmental needs are put into perspective for formulation of suitable solutions.
