US treasury secretary Janet Yellen is in town this week. While news headlines have focused on the overlapping visits to the continent of Yellen, Russia’s Sergey Lavrov and China’s Qin Gang, Yellen’s comparative advantage is marked. She’s a pre-eminent economist — the first to have led the Federal Reserve, the White House council of economic advisers and the treasury — and she’s here to leverage that experience to build US-Africa relations.

Fellow columnist John Dludlu recently suggested Washington’s overtures to Africa are likely to fail, in part because the US has lost its race to court Africa through trade. (“Too little, too late for the US to counter China in Africa (https://www.businesslive.co.za/bd/opinion/columnists/2023-01-18-john-dludlu-too-little-too-late-for-the-us-to-counter-china-in-africa/)”, January 18). I disagree...

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