Did US secretary of State mean it when he said Washington will not dictate Africa’s choices?

Today, I have the honor of setting out our government’s new strategy for the partnership between sub-Saharan Africa and the United States. It’s a strategy that builds on the broad vision for our nation’s engagement in the region, which I had an opportunity to share last November in Nigeria.

It is fitting to set out the strategy here, on the Future Africa campus, an institution whose mission is bringing together people from different disciplines, backgrounds, and nationalities to tackle some of the most vexing challenges of our time.

Our future depends on young people like the scholars and practitioners who come here to study. By 2050, one in four people on the planet we share will be African. They will shape the destiny not only of this continent but of the world.

It’s also fitting because South Africa’s struggle for freedom, and the courage and sacrifices of those who led it, continues to inspire people around the world. We know that in South Africa, like in the United States, the long walk to freedom is unfinished. Yet the remarkable progress made is all around us.

In 1956, 156 activists were rounded up for rallying support for the Freedom Charter, a document that had the audacity to claim that South Africa belonged to its people. When the Treason Trial began here in Pretoria, the accused included one of the charter’s drafters, Professor Z.K. Matthews, and a rising ANC activist, Joe Matthews – father and son, and grandfather and father to the woman who today serves as South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Dr. Naledi Pandor.

We see that progress also in the achievements of her fellow South Africans – the recent triumphs of the women of Banyana Banyana, the men of the Springboks. The enduring musical influences of Makeba and Masekela, the new sway of the Amapiano and DJs like Black Coffee, who just took home a Grammy.

Finally, it’s fitting to set out our strategy here in South Africa because there is such a deep bond between our nations and people, and all we have in common as vibrant democracies whose diversity remains our greatest strength.

Our strategy is rooted in the recognition that sub-Saharan Africa is a major geopolitical force, one that shaped our past, is shaping our present, and will shape our future.

It’s a strategy that reflects the region’s complexity – its diversity, its power and influence – and one that focuses on what we will do with African nations and peoples, not for African nations and peoples.

Put simply, the United States and African nations can’t achieve any of our shared priorities – whether that’s recovering from the pandemic, creating broad-based economic opportunity, addressing the climate crisis, expanding energy access, revitalizing democracies, or strengthening the free and open international order – we can’t do any of that if we don’t work together as equal partners.

That is why I’d like to focus on four priorities that we believe we have to tackle together which are at the heart of the U.S. strategy for sub-Saharan Africa.

First, we will foster openness, by which we mean the capacity of individuals, communities, and nations to choose their own path and shape the world we live in.

When leaders of newly independent African nations came together in 1963 to establish the Organization of African Unity, the predecessor to the African Union, here’s how they began their charter: “Convinced that it is the inalienable right of all people to control their own destiny.”

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