Daily Archives: January 24, 2025

Dear American Lawmakers: USA Policy Frameworks on Africa needs new strategy

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Friday January 24, 2025United States Senate Committee on Foreign RelationsAddress: 423 Dirksen Senate Office Building, Washington, DCUnited States House Committee on Foreign AffairsAddress: 2170 Rayburn House Office Building, Washington, DC 20515United States Department of StateAddress: 2201 C Street NW, Washington, DC 20520Date: 01/19/2025Subject: USA Policy Frameworks on Africa needs new strategy:The U.S. House of Representatives held a historic number of votes in early January 2023 to choose its next speaker. (© Andrew Harnik/AP)Dear Honorable Senators & House Representatives,The influence of the United States in Africa has been declining, a trend that started years ago due to policy frameworks adopted by the US government over the years based on Security and Social change alone, a shift that has allowed China to increase its presence in the continent based on Infrastructure building and debt integrating Africa into its Belt and Road Initiative. Many African countries have turned to China for economic development and friendship due to their unconditional financing and development of infrastructure projects such as roads, railways, and ports, often leading to debt burden and takeover of critical infrastructure.Chinese funding, while not free and often costly, is executed more rapidly compared to US policies on infrastructure development in Africa. Historically, US involvement in Africa was based on food grants and Peace Corps social and democratic changes based on Western models. However, to the detriment of the United States, many of its current policy frameworks are geared towards Military and Security bases and not on resource gain and commercial development. Some short-sighted lobby groups are advocating political interference and recalibrating the territorial sovereignty of post-colonial Africa which is a Pandora’s box of instability and endless wars. Lobbyists such as Peter Pham, a Fellow at the Atlantic Council and a former US undersecretary in the past, and Tibor Nagy, a former Ambassador and assistant secretary of state for Africa in the past administrations, are the ones who gave misdirected advice on Africa and allowed China to thrive and expand in the continent.Africans are yearning for friendlier and better working relations with the United States today to counter China and the BRICS membership drive. The past policy frameworks were mostly disruptive and divisive and have helped create more uncertainties in the continent. We believe it is necessary for the United States of America to strengthen its presence in Africa, home of much of the critical minerals and other resources needed for the new technologies of the twenty-first century. Personalities such as Peter Pham and Tibor Nagy and others of the same school of thought should not be included in the new Trump administration. We need empathetic personalities and diplomats who can work with African countries and their populations to grant unfettered access to their resources to the American Enterprises and assist with their development needs.The African continent is currently an economic and political battleground between the West, with the USA in the lead and many emerging and other major economies, including BRICS. It is important for the new administration, congress and Senate, and in particular, the Department of State, to engage the African continent and maintain the peace and stability of the continent in helping get rid of terror groups in the Horn of Africa region, the Sahel region or West Africa and Central Africa. The sovereignty and integrity of nations is an important and sensitive matter that should be respected by the new administration and the State department. It could have critical effects on America’s future relations with the continent.We must respect the African Union protocols on borders, which highlight the importance of respecting the intangibility of borders as they existed when each country was accepted as a member of the United Nations Organization after independence, which itself also respects these borders. The African protocols on borders were promulgated in legal and political frameworks, including Resolution 16(1) of the July 1964 Cairo Declaration and Article 4(b and f) of the constitutive Act of the African Union (AU). Africa knows that violation of these conventions and protocols will open a Pandora’s box, which will be unstoppable and cause more harm to the continent. Some of the lobby groups such as the ones noted above promote recognition by the United States of many secessionist movements in the continent. This overreach will push the continent firmly into the hands of China and other competitors of the United States of America and the West in general.We understand it is the responsibility of the United States Government to pick its own staff who will work with the African continent, it will be wise if they select those who can pull the continent and its population towards cooperating more with the USA and the West.Best regards,The Global Somali CouncilEmail: [email protected]On behalf of thousands of concerned Somali citizens.