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Blinken To Visit Nigeria As Russia, China Make Gains in Africa

Published

1 year ago

January 18, 2024

The United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken will visit sub-Saharan Africa for the first time in 10 months, the State Department said Thursday, redirecting his focus as rivals Russia and China seek gains there.

After four frenetic tours of the Middle East since war broke out on October 7 with a Hamas attack on Israel, Blinken will visit Nigeria, Ivory Coast, Angola and Cape Verde starting Monday.

Blinken will discuss economic growth and “advance security partnerships based on shared values such as respect for human rights, promotion of democracy and expansion of the rule of law,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.

On Blinken’s last visit to sub-Saharan Africa, he became the highest-ranking US official ever to visit Niger, hoping to champion the fragile democracy, also a frontline country in the fight against Sahel jihadists.

Just four months later, the military deposed the elected president, Mohamed Bazoum. Niger’s army-installed prime minister this week visited Russia for talks on boosting military cooperation.

Russia, through its powerful Wagner mercenary group, has also been active in Mali, the Central African Republic and allegedly Burkina Faso.

Molly Phee, the top US diplomat for Africa who visited Niger in December, said that Niger should look at Mali’s descent since aligning with Russia.

“That isn’t a model that I would want to follow,” she told reporters.

“We have a demonstrated track record there that they’re well aware of, and we hope they make the right decision,” she said.

Ivory Coast has been among the most outspoken countries against the Niger coup, backing sanctions and with President Alassane Ouattara initially musing about joint West African military action to restore democracy.

Blinken will also look to show Washington’s softer side, including by attending a football match in Abidjan during the Africa Cup of Nations.

In Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and home to the headquarters of West African regional bloc ECOWAS, Blinken will head to Abuja to meet President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and also tour the bustling metropolis Lagos.

US President Joe Biden, who vowed a new interest in Africa when he welcomed African leaders to Washington in December 2022, had promised to visit in 2023 but did not do so, and a trip is seen as increasingly unlikely this year as he focuses on reelection.

Combatting unease in Africa
Even before the Middle East crisis, in which the United States has been nearly isolated in its staunch support of Israel, many in Africa had watched uneasily as the West devoted billions of dollars to Ukraine in its fight against a Russian invasion.

Blinken will arrive in Ivory Coast on Monday, days after a visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

While US-China tensions have eased, Washington considers Beijing its top long-term rival and has pitched itself as a better partner for Africa than Beijing, whose speciality is major infrastructure projects financed through loans.

Phee rejected talk of a US-China “soccer match” on African soil, saying, “If China didn’t exist, we would (still) be fully engaged in Africa. Africa is important for its own sake, and it’s important for American interests.”

Mark Green, a former US ambassador to Tanzania and congressman who is now president of the Wilson Center think tank, said that while China will inevitably come up, African leaders will not respond well if it dominates the conversation.

Political leaders “tend to go to Africa because of ‘security’ or China or problems. In fact, listening to African leaders — their hopes, their dreams, their capacities — is the way we brighten the world’s future,” said Green, pointing out that the continent has the world’s youngest population.

“There are short-term issues, but this is a long-term investment,” he said.

The United States has been developing closer relations with Angola, a major oil producer, since its transition to democracy, after supporting UNITA rebels in the country’s decades of civil war.

Angola, along with close US ally Kenya, has worked to broker an end to fighting in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, which accuses Rwanda of backing rebels there

AFP

Related Topics:#Nigeria Africa Blinken China Russia

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Trouble Looms As Trump Gives Iran Two Weeks To Avoid US Airstrikes

Published

3 hours ago

June 21, 2025

Editor

President Donald Trump said Friday that Iran had a “maximum” of two weeks to avoid possible US air strikes, indicating he could make a decision before the fortnight deadline he set a day earlier.

Trump added that he was not inclined to stop Israel attacking Iran because it was “winning,” and was dismissive of European efforts to mediate an end to the conflict.

“I’m giving them a period of time, and I would say two weeks would be the maximum,” Trump told reporters when asked if he could decide to strike Iran before that.

He added that the aim was to “see whether or not people come to their senses.”

Trump had said in a statement on Thursday that he would “make my decision whether or not to go within the next two weeks” because there was a “substantial chance of negotiations” with Iran.

Those comments had been widely seen as opening a two-week window for negotiations to end the war between Israel and Iran, with the European powers rushing to talks with Tehran.

But his latest remarks indicated Trump could still make his decision before that if he feels that there has been no progress towards dismantling Iran’s nuclear program.

Trump meanwhile dismissed talks that European powers Britain, France, Germany and the EU had with Iran’s foreign minister in Geneva on Friday.

Europe ‘didn’t help’

“They didn’t help,” he said as he arrived in Morristown, New Jersey, ahead of a fundraising dinner at his nearby golf club.

“Iran doesn’t want to speak to Europe. They want to speak to us. Europe is not going to be able to help in this.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said after the talks in Geneva that Tehran would not resume negotiations with the United States until Israel stopped its attacks.

But Trump was reluctant.

“It’s very hard to make that request right now,” Trump said.

“If somebody’s winning, it’s a little bit harder to do than if somebody’s losing, but we’re ready, willing and able, and we’ve been speaking to Iran, and we’ll see what happens.”

Trump meanwhile doubled down on his claims that Iran is weeks away from being able to produce a nuclear bomb, despite divisions in his own administration about the intelligence behind his assessment.

Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s director of national intelligence, said in a report in March that Iran was not close to having enough enriched uranium for a nuclear weapon.

“She’s wrong,” Trump said of Gabbard, a longtime opponent of US foreign intervention whom Trump tapped to coordinate the sprawling US spy community.

Iran says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

AFP

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Trump Orders Mass Layoffs At Voice Of America, Other US-funded Media

Published

3 hours ago

June 21, 2025

Editor

President Donald Trump’s administration on Friday ordered mass layoffs at Voice of America and other government-funded media, moving ahead with gutting the outlets despite legal disputes and criticism that US adversaries will benefit.

Kari Lake, a fervent Trump supporter named to a senior role at the US Agency for Global Media, said the notices were a “long-overdue effort to dismantle a bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.”

Lake said in a statement that she would work with the State Department and Congress to “make sure the telling of America’s story is modernized, effective and aligned with America’s foreign policy.”

Trump issued an order in March that froze Voice of America (VOA) for the first time since it was founded in 1942.

Termination notices were sent to 639 employees on Friday, after previous offers of voluntary departures and dismissals of contractors.

Some 1,400 positions have been eliminated, with only 250 remaining, Lake said.

Voice of America layoffs included journalists from its Persian service who had briefly been brought back to work after Israel attacked Iran a week ago.

Employees have filed a lawsuit challenging Lake’s actions, which come even though Congress had already appropriated funding.

The mass firing decision “spells the death of 83 years of independent journalism that upholds the US ideals of democracy and freedom around the world,” the three plaintiffs wrote in a statement.

“Moscow, Beijing, Tehran and extremist groups are flooding the information space with anti-American propaganda. Do not cede this ground by silencing America’s voice,” said the three complainants, Patsy Widakuswara, Jessica Jerreat and Kate Neeper.

Senator Jeanne Shaheen, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the “decimation of US broadcasting leaves authoritarian propaganda unchecked by US backed independent media and is a perversion of the law and congressional intent.”

“It is a dark day for the truth,” she wrote on X.

Trump frequently attacks media outlets and has scoffed at the so-called editorial firewall at VOA which prevents the government from intervening in its coverage, something he at times has considered too critical of his administration.

One outlet preserved by the mass cuts has been Radio Marti, which broadcasts into Cuba and enjoys support from anti-communist Cuban-American Republican lawmakers.

Other outlets funded by the US government have included Radio Free Asia, which was set up to provide news to Asian countries without a free press and is now operating in a limited capacity.

Radio Free Europe, formed with a similar mission for Soviet bloc nations during the Cold War, has survived thanks to support from the Czech government.

AFP

Headline

Thousands Protest In Tehran Against Israel

Published

9 hours ago

June 20, 2025

Editor

Thousands of people joined a protest against Israel in the Iranian capital on Friday after weekly prayers, chanting slogans in support of their leaders, images on state television showed.

“This is the Friday of the Iranian nation’s solidarity and resistance across the country,” the news anchor said.

Footage showed protesters in Tehran holding up photographs of commanders killed since the start of the war with Israel, while others waved the flags of Iran and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah.

“I will sacrifice my life for my leader,” read a protester’s banner, a reference to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

According to state television, protests took place in other cities around the country, including in Tabriz in northwestern Iran and Shiraz in the south.

AFP