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Africa slips down US priorities list, expert tells news platform

Yinka Adegoke noted that the Biden administration’s reduced interest in the African continent with the fact that the Ukraine conflict and Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip drew the US leader’s attention

NEW YORK, December 29. /TASS/. The administration of US President Joe Biden pays less attention to communication with African countries a year on since the latest US-African summit, Yinka Adegoke, the Africa editor of Semafor, opined.

"It’s starting to feel like Africa has dropped back down the US priorities list," Adegoke wrote. He explains the Biden administration’s reduced interest in the African continent with the fact that the Ukraine conflict and Israel’s military operation in the Gaza Strip drew the US leader’s attention. According to the editor, the situation was quite different back a year ago, when, following the US-African summit in Washington in December 2022, Joe Biden was planning to tour African countries in 2023, but never did so.

Senior US officials disagree. Judd Devermont, Biden’s special assistant on African affairs, argues that 2023 saw "an unprecedented pace of [US] senior-level travel to Africa." Among other high-profile officials, Vice President Kamala Harris and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen visited the continent. Besides, the United States is planning to invest $55 bln in Africa in the next three years, Devermont added. Meanwhile, no African country has extended an official invitation to the US leader, W. Gyude Moore, a senior policy fellow at the Center for Global Development, a think tank, and former Liberian minister for public works.

According to the US news platform, the US is also set to intensify cooperation in security with African nations. Earlier, France’s RFI radio reported that a US private military company, Bancroft, announced plans to start working in the Central African Republic by agreement with the country’s government.

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