IVOR ICHIKOWITZ: Africa wants to partner with the rest of the world, not be the victim

In 2010, as SA prepared to host the first ever Soccer World Cup on African soil, a cry went up that would reverberate around the continent: Ke nako (it is time), feel it, it is here.

I was thinking of that not just because of the finals of the 2022 Soccer World Cup being played in Qatar, but rather because of the 2022 US-Africa summit that was held the week before in Washington DC.

I had said beforehand that I hoped there would be a New Deal for Africa, but in truth I had not set my hopes too high. I had attended the inaugural summit held in the end days of president Barack Obama’s administration and it had reflected that end-of-an era sentiment. I did not have much confidence that this would be any better.

I was wrong. I left the summit energised and excited. The language of US President Joe Biden’s administration reflects what we have been saying for the last 20 years in Africa: create partnerships between the US and African countries that are on an equal and voluntary basis and involve tangible investment rather than just aid and concessionary trade deals — all under the aegis of Africa being a long term strategic partner for the US.

It’s a far cry from the foundations that were laid at the first conference, which in many ways allowed China to take the lead on the continent in terms of forging partnerships and investing in developing the continent to it and Africa’s mutual benefit.

Security was not fore and centre of the public discussion, but was debated in the closed sessions and bilaterally with particularly affected countries, proof once more of the growing US realisation that most of the fundamentalist insurgencies in Africa are as much a threat to the US as they are to Africa because the insurgents are using countries on the continent as recruiting grounds and staging posts, radicalising local populations as they prepare to launch against the US.

The new White House strategy recognises Africa’s importance to the US and the need to partner with African governments in a variety of different ways, all of them tangible and measurable. The most significant one is perhaps Biden’s renewed call for Africa to have a seat on the UN permanent security council and gain membership to the G20.

But there are many other initiatives for Africa too: the Biden administration has overseen trade and investment deals worth $18bn since last year in more than 800 reciprocal deals across 47 countries. The US-Africa summit saw the announcement of more than $15bn in new deals as business leaders from more than 300 US and African companies met with the heads of 50 delegations, creating a network of connections that can only grow from there. In total, the US is putting $55bn into its shared priorities with Africa over the next three years.

Personally, two of the most meaningful business initiatives were the $350m project to transform digital access in Africa and the agricultural industry. As the African Youth Survey has found, most youths regard digital access as a basic human right. Access to affordable and reliable data gets them to connect to the rest of the world, to be part of the global workplace, to be internationally relevant and to be entrepreneurial. Working with participating African governments the US is going to make a huge contribution towards this, and quickly too.

The second critical area is agriculture. Russia’s war in Ukraine has been a wake-up call for the West's, and the world’s, dependence on Ukraine as the world’s breadbasket as well as on Russia for basic commodities and even fertiliser. It was extremely pleasing to hear the discussions on developing Africa into the world’s breadbasket through establishing a US style agricultural industry, rather than the traditional and often inefficient subsistence farming. In the process, as US secretary of state Anthony Blinken noted, African countries can solve their own food insecurities while exporting the surplus to the world.

There is an incredible interest by American companies across the spectrum — finance, tech and agriculture — to invest and collaborate in agriculture. My own company has invested in a potash project in Congo Brazzaville, and we never considered the US a viable partner before the summit. By the time it had ended we were inundated with requests by US companies wanting to know how they can help develop this into one of the biggest fertiliser projects on the globe.

I have spent my entire life in Africa, living and working here. It is one of the most exciting geographies on the globe, but I have also seen how misinterpreted Africa is in the rest of the world. It sees the Dark Continent as synonymous with huge social challenges and ecological catastrophes — a place that has to be saved.

My Africa is the opposite. It is resilient, hopeful, proud, energetic. It wants to collaborate and partner with the rest of the world, not be the victim. This was one of the key rationales for the establishment of the African Youth Survey, to put science behind the real hopes and aspirations of the youth population — because they are the next generation of leaders.

A lot of the perceptions that used to exist about Africa are incredibly insulting to a population that Blinken noted will be 40% of the world population by 2030. By 2050 this population will not only be the youngest in the world, but the greatest source of labour on the globe and the biggest consumer market too. It is the most globally significant constituency imaginable. The choices they make will shape not just their own future, but the world’s, which is why it is so vitally important to understand their aspirations, fears and triggers.

The US-Africa summit was a vindication and endorsement of what we have been doing in this regard, and I hope Europe and Asia will follow the US’s lead when it comes to partnering with Africa and supporting its growth and development. This summit has in every regard produced a New Deal for Africa, but there are caveats. The first is America’s continued use of sanctions. It is difficult to use a weapon that punishes the entire population of a country rather than the individuals it is targeted against and yet speak of partnership and non-interference in the same breath. This is something the Biden administration will have to revisit to ensure the New Deal is properly accepted for what it is.

The second caveat is China: the US celebrated two-way trade with Africa of $80bn. This is far less than China’s trade of $270bn. The US can catch up, but it will have to emulate the Chinese government credit guarantee scheme, because the elephant in the room is the widely-held perception that Africa is corrupt, governments are unreliable and credit is not secure. The Chinese guaranteed their private enterprise so they became highly motivated to raise capital from Chinese banks and institutions and invest in Africa. The US government will have to do something similar. In turn, no-one can put more pressure on African governments to meet their commitments to the private sector than the US government, which is why this step is so vital.

I was glad too that there was no talk by Washington of a strategy to counter China. Africa should not be an economic battleground, instead it can be the template for a new era in Sino-US relations. Biden’s New Deal is a golden opportunity for US and Chinese interests to come together in a mutually beneficial partnership to the benefit of everyone concerned. As Biden noted during the summit, this is the “decisive decade”. As we say in Africa, if you want to go fast, you go alone but if you want to far, you go together. I believe this New Deal is a blueprint for just that.

• Ichikowitz, an African industrialist and philanthropist who founded and chairs The Paramount Group and chairs TransAfrica Capital, chairs the Ichikowitz Family Foundation, which conceptualised and funds the African Youth Survey. This article was first published on US political website The Hill.