CNN —
When Kamala Harris leaves Air Force Two in Ghana on Sunday, she will become the first black US vice president to visit Africa and mark another chapter in her barrier-breaking role.
As the vice president embarks on her first trip to the continent since childhood, the weight of that historic moment is one her advisers say she deeply understands. The depth of symbolism will serve as a critical backdrop to a journey that carries both imminent diplomatic consequences and long-lasting historical significance.
Administration officials predicting the vice president’s trip said it was a “forward-looking” relationship-deepening expedition, designed to take into account that the average age of the continent’s citizens is 19 and its population is growing rapidly.
“I will be traveling to Africa primarily to speak with African leaders about what we as the United States are willing to do to play our part in investing in the future of this continent,” Harris said in a radio interview on Friday.
Harris hopes to build on issues such as African innovation and technology, regional security, food security, women’s empowerment, climate and democracy, officials said. And it will bring in investment through its continent-wide public and private investments.
“The vice president is visiting the three countries where the government is investing in democracies, especially at a time when we know there is a global democratic recession,” a senior government official said on the call with reporters. “The United States believes that Africa is critical to addressing global challenges. And we see their visit as another opportunity to consult and exchange ideas with partners about our common goals.”
Harris’ visit is reminiscent of that of former President Barack Obama, which drew huge crowds, and the widespread personal embrace of regional leaders trying to connect with the political and historical moment rooted in the world’s most powerful leader had a direct bloodline to their continent.
But the geopolitical climate that awaits Harris is very different than it was nearly 15 years ago, when the last Black White House director took office. Amid hopes for Obama’s presidency, many African leaders still expressed frustration at the continuation of longstanding feelings that promises made in one region were only marginally kept, while too often remaining marginalized in international debates.
The struggle to fill that vacuum has steadily escalated into a growing diplomatic proxy fight, with the Biden administration accelerating efforts to secure sustainable African partnerships to counter the weight of China’s and Russia’s growing influence, and Harris becoming the senior Biden -Be an official who will visit Africa to meet this challenge.
The high-profile mission will put the vice president on a diplomatic tightrope walk and require Harris to show African nations that the US wants genuine cooperation to enhance the continent’s potential and avoid viewing African nations as pawns in the broader geopolitical strategy to represent the United States. experts say.
“The danger is that we go there and say, ‘We’d like to talk to you about China,'” said Mark Green, former US ambassador to Tanzania and current president of the Wilson Center think tank. “It would be very hard to blame Africans if they didn’t hear that and say, ‘Ah, this isn’t about us, this is about China.'”
The difficult balancing act was demonstrated when African leaders convened for the US-Africa Leaders Summit in Washington late last year, where officials were careful to stay true to the public message that US efforts were more focused on tangible economic – to offer safety and security measures and to communicate by telegraph positive vision for years to come.
But the implicit reality was hard to miss throughout the conference – and was only compounded by the pressure created by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, which has hit low-income countries hard over the past year.
After departing Washington on Saturday, Harris will land in Accra on Sunday afternoon. From there begins a six-day march through the capitals of three countries, where Harris will hold bilateral meetings with all three leaders, including Tanzania’s first President Samia Suluhu Hassan. In Ghana, Harris will deliver a high-profile speech to young people before visiting the famous Cape Coast Castle, a relic of the slave trade system in West Africa and beyond. And in Zambia, Harris will bring together US and local business leaders to discuss digital and financial leadership.
But the question of China and its influence will be at the background of almost all engagements Harris closely monitors as officials seek to reassert US leadership in African countries to counter competing investments that have left the US lagging behind.
A senior administration official said the US had made it clear that “our relationship with Africa cannot and should not and will not be defined by competition with China.”
“We do not ask our partners for a choice,” the official added. “We want to expand African opportunities, not limit them.”
Harris will see one of the clearest examples of China’s influence when she flies to Zambia. Air Force Two will land at the newly renovated Kenneth Kaunda International Airport in Lusaka, funded and designed with Chinese money.
The vice president’s motorcade is likely to drive on roads also funded by Chinese loans and past buildings with Chinese advertising.
After the US absence from the region, compounded by former President Donald Trump, who largely ignored Africa, never visited the continent and even crudely disparaged certain African nations as “shithole countries” at a 2018 meeting, other nations rushed in. China has worked to expand trade ties with African nations, developing major infrastructure projects there, some with high-yield loans. And Russia has expanded its military influence, including through mercenaries like the Wagner Group.
When Finance Minister Janet Yellen visited the fast-growing country in January, she called on China to restructure Zambia’s billions of dollars in debt. Yellen warned that the level of debt threatens progress as China holds about $6 billion of the country’s $17 billion in foreign debt.
At the White House briefing on Wednesday, National Security Council Strategic Communications Coordinator John Kirby put it more bluntly: “They get these loans – high interest rates, they can’t pay them. China says, “Hey, the bill is due. So, I guess I’ll take this and this and that from you.’…African leaders are beginning to realize that unlike the United States, China’s interests in the region are purely selfish.”
A former US official said Harris would be wise to parrot that message during their bilateral meetings.
“I think there has to be a hard love, which is that Zambia got into this problem,” the former official told CNN, noting that it was largely the previous government that borrowed. Harris’ message, they said, should focus on helping Zambia attract foreign companies to invest. “You have to create the conditions to encourage people to come.”
A senior administration official said Harris will have direct discussions about debt with officials during a series of meetings in Zambia and other countries such as Ghana.
In preparation, Harris told CNN on Friday she consulted with experts and used briefing materials as she “considered the future and what that will be in terms of the relationship between the United States and the African continent.” I am very optimistic about what the partnership will bring as we continue to move forward in this relationship.”
And in those discussions, experts say Harris needs to show US sincerity about its long-term commitment to the region and that its earlier promises that the US would be a “better partner” for economic stability are still true.
This promise is rooted in economic opportunity for the region. Current senior administration officials say Harris will build on remarks she made during the Africa Leadership Summit in Washington, where she touted US commitments to invest in innovation and creativity across the continent.
“By working together, we can unlock growth and opportunity far beyond what either of us can achieve alone,” Harris said at the time.
In addition to meeting US and local business leaders in Zambia, Harris will meet with tech entrepreneurs in Tanzania and women entrepreneurs in Ghana.
Harris’ trip is the latest of several US officials planning to visit or have visited Africa. First Lady Jill Biden returned from her trip to Africa last month. US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield visited earlier this year. Secretary of State Antony Blinken traveled to Ethiopia and Niger last week, and President Joe Biden is expected to visit the continent later this year.
The “people-to-people” interactions will be a crucial part of the vice president’s trip, a senior administration official said. Harris will visit a recording studio during his stay in Ghana to promote the creative industries. And she will have a homecoming event in Zambia. Although Harris is the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, Harris spent time in Lusaka in the 1960s while visiting her maternal grandfather, who was serving in his role as an Indian civil servant.
Harris’ historic trip as the first black US Vice President will come almost eight years after Obama’s last trip to the region during his administration.
Obama’s first trip to the region was met with much fanfare, in large part due to his father’s Kenyan roots. A senior administration official told reporters Thursday she expected “tremendous energy and excitement” for Harris’ trip. Harris’ husband, second gentleman Doug Emhoff, will also accompany the vice president on her trip, but will focus his own agenda on gender equality. The continent’s reception for the vice president and her husband will be closely watched and likely judged against the former first family.
“I think the biggest challenge will be the critics at home,” said Melvin Foote, president and CEO of the Constituency for Africa, a group that has advised Democratic and Republican governments on Africa for more than 30 years.
Ultimately, the former president’s legacy in the region is mixed, in large part due to the crises around the world that have dominated much of his administration’s attention. Disappointment grew at what some perceived as a lack of attention.
Professor Matthew Carotenuto, co-author of Obama and Kenya: Contested Histories and the Politics of Belonging, predicted that Harris would likely receive “cautious optimism” from local Africans as a result.
“Certainly people will be interested in her and interested in hearing from her. But I don’t think it will be received the way we saw it (with Obama),” Carotenuto said in an interview with CNN. He added that the reception might be different if Harris were president. “The power of the character plays a role in this, as does her own background.”
Harris will tout her legacy as she visits the grounds of Cape Coast Castle in Ghana, a slave outpost in Ghana where hundreds of thousands of Africans were shipped as human cargo to a life of servitude in the United States, South America and the Caribbean.
Obama and the first family toured the castle and its dungeons during their first trip in 2009.
Senior administration officials say Harris will use the trip to highlight the African diaspora, a group of communities around the world that includes millions of African immigrants and descendants of black slaves.
“We will always remember and teach all of this, this is a painful, horrible history,” Harris said in a radio interview on Friday. “But there’s also a story that’s about pride and the culture and the traditions that so many of us have inherited because of this intertwined relationship.”
At the Africa Leaders Summit, Harris announced that Biden would sign an executive order establishing the Presidential Advisory Council on Engagement with the African Diaspora, which aims to provide advice and recommendations to strengthen Africa-US relations. Harris’ likely emotionally charged visit aims to build on that arrangement.
“There are deep historical and long-standing ties between the US and Africa,” said Dr. Jannette Yarwood, former senior adviser to the State Department and current director of anthropology for Africa at Yale University. “It is significant that she is black. It is significant that she walks into this room.”