2024-01-24 02:05:47
US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, on a tour of West Africa, spoke with Nigeria’s President Bola Ahmed Tinubu on Tuesday before heading to Angola. The diplomat promoted a “comprehensive approach”, and not just military, to counter the democratic decline in the region.
Published on: 01/24/2024 – 03:05
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US Secretary of State Antony Blinken sought to counter democratic decline in West Africa and called for fighting extremism beyond a strictly military approach, before continuing his African tour in Angola.
Antony Blinken proposed expanded U.S. security assistance but said a “comprehensive approach” was needed, nearly a year after the military toppled Niger’s elected president, Mohamed Bazoum, and as Russia and China are making progress in the region.
This effort means “working with local communities in a partnership, demonstrating that security forces are there first and foremost to protect them and respond to their needs,” he said Tuesday, January 23 in Abuja, the Nigerian capital, before -last stop of his tour.
This inclusive approach had “brought results” in Niger during the mandate of Mohamed Bazoum, declared Antony Blinken. “Wherever there has been an unconstitutional change of direction,” he added, “things have only gotten worse.”
Economic reforms welcomed
Antony Blinken spoke with Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, elected last year on a program of economic and security measures for the continent’s most populous country and Africa’s largest economy. While welcoming these reforms, he stressed that some of them, notably the removal of fuel subsidies, would cause “suffering” in the short term.
Washington has welcomed President Tinubu’s call for an investigation into a Nigerian army drone attack that accidentally killed at least 85 villagers celebrating a Muslim holiday in December. The United States is committed to being “a strong security partner for Nigeria,” Antony Blinken said.
Nigeria is plagued by massive attacks by criminal and jihadist groups. The jihadist conflict that has raged for nearly 15 years in the northeast has left more than 40,000 dead and 2 million displaced.
The Ivorian approach
Earlier Tuesday, the American Secretary of State praised the Ivorian approach in the fight against jihadism. “I must applaud Côte d’Ivoire’s approach: working with communities, listening to them, ensuring that security forces understand their needs, their concerns,” declared the head of American diplomacy during a press briefing alongside President Alassane Ouattara. “I think this can serve as a very strong model for other countries,” he added.
Bordering Mali and Burkina, Côte d’Ivoire has so far succeeded in stemming the jihadist threat, by combining a security and economic development approach. The last incident linked to these armed groups in the north of the country dates back to early 2021.
Antony Blinken announced that American-Ivorian cooperation would be strengthened, particularly in the training of troops. Some $45 million will be added to a $300 million program aimed at helping West African countries fight insecurity.
Alassane Ouattara, for his part, spoke of “a convergence of views on the continental situation” in a West African region which has “a lot of difficulties with the coups d’état in a certain number of countries neighboring Ivory Coast”. “We agree that these countries must move as quickly as possible towards democratic regimes,” he said.
“We are focusing on Africa”
Ivory Coast is one of the strong voices in West Africa against the military coups which have multiplied there over the last three years, in Mali, Guinea, Burkina and Niger. Nigeria and the Ivory Coast largely stand with the United States – as does another key partner, Kenya – despite much of the continent’s unease over the West’s desire to arm Ukraine and , more recently, in the face of American support for Israel in its war against Hamas.
Their position contrasts with another heavyweight on the continent, South Africa, accused by the United States of authorizing arms shipments to Russia and which recently annoyed Washington by bringing an accusation of genocide against Israel before the International Court of Justice.
President Joe Biden received African leaders in 2022 to demonstrate renewed American attention to the continent. He had promised to visit Africa in 2023, but did not follow through on this commitment. Antony Blinken, however, took up the words of Joe Biden to say: “We are going all out on Africa”. This is Antony Blinken’s first visit to sub-Saharan Africa since March 2023.
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