China, Russia ‘destabilizing’ Africa: US

The United States warned Tuesday that China and Russia were destabilizing Africa with their growing inroads as it rolled out the red carpet to the continent's leaders and pledged billions of dollars in support.

Forty-nine African leaders flew into the Washington cold for the first continent-wide summit with the United States in eight years as President Joe Biden seeks to use personal diplomacy to win back influence.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, at a panel with several African presidents at the start of the three-day summit, charged that US rivals had a different approach.

Austin said China was expanding its footprint in Africa "on a daily basis" through its growing economic influence.

"The troubling piece there is they're not always transparent in terms of what they're doing and that creates problems that will be eventually destabilizing, if they're not already," Austin said.

Russia was "continuing to peddle cheap weapons" and deploying "mercenaries across the continent," he added. "And that is destabilizing as well."

But the Biden administration has been careful not to present Africans with an us-or-them choice, believing it is futile to try to turn the tide on China's massive infrastructure spending.

Biden plans to unveil $55 billion for Africa over three years. In one of the first announcements, the White House said the United States would invest $4 billion by the 2025 fiscal year to train African health workers, a rising priority for Washington since the Covid-19 pandemic.

The summit also brought in Nasa, with Nigeria and Rwanda becoming the first African nations to sign the Artemis accords, a US-led bid for international cooperation on traveling to the Moon, Mars and beyond.

The Artemis accords, come as China rapidly expands its own lunar program and as tensions with Russia threaten its post-Cold War work with the United States on space.