© AP Photo / Susan Walsh/RIA Novosti

December 13-15 saw the second American–African summit take place in the United States, designed to strengthen Washington's influence on the Dark Continent. With this forum, President Joe Biden sought to restore lost influence in Africa by gathering 49 of its leaders in the American capital. The White House made no bones about the summit’s underlying reason – China’s intensified expansion and Russia's presence in the region.

Notably, the previous meeting of the kind was arranged in 2014 by President Barack Obama and actually turned futile: few if any topics brought up back then did work out at the end of the day. According to head of the African Energy Chamber Nj Ayuk, such summits yield generally nonexecutable pledges, whatever their ostensible sincerity.

By organizing this year’s summit, Joe Biden must have made his mind to put things right. But here's the tricky bit: he has never visited Africa in almost two years of his presidency, having only sent Secretary of State Anthony Blinken there. His summer visit to South Africa, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Rwanda was aimed to rehabilitate for failures of the Biden administration's Africa policy and outline its upcoming new US strategy. The latter is about building partnerships while heeding to Africa and creating open societies there; offering democracy development dividends; assistance in solving the continent’s pressing issues, in particular as regards the COVID-19 pandemic; prioritizing climate issues and energy transition.

With the USA–Africa Forum, the White House has made another attempt to claim global leadership by inviting to Washington the Dark Continent countries’ leaders, who prefer working with China and Russia over the United States. Which is worrisome to the current administration, as it does its best to win over African countries to its side. Therefore, the White House has promised that African leaders get both $55 billion in investments over the next three years and assistance in carrying out internal reforms, addressing security problems and climate change.

However, judging by the tone of US media outlets, the US–Africa summit has been hardly brought about by Biden’s declared desire to enhance the African continent’s prosperity. Washington deems Africa as another springboard to combat other powers, namely Russia and especially China.

The White House's willingness to compete more actively with Beijing and Moscow along this track resembles English Professor John Guillebaud’s “Elephant in the Room.” Many years on, the phrase is interpreted as a group of people sitting in a room with an elephant and thinking their own thoughts, as if the elephant was not there at all, because they are simply indisposed to deal with it. But the expression’s profound meaning is that one can hardly solve all the great many problems, regardless of how long you brace up. In our case, the conditional "elephant" is the United States itself, which the African countries don’t seem enthusiastic to do business with.

And the cause lies in China’s having long surpassed Washington in terms of trade and economic cooperation with Africa. Russia is another one to have been efficiently developing ties with it: for one, the second Russia–Africa summit is scheduled for 2023. Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin anxiously pointed out at the Washington meeting that Russia and China were boosting their economic clout, and this cannot but cause concern with the United States.

Interestingly, the US is also worried about the political vector of cooperating with the Dark Continent. An alarming thing is many African countries’ unwillingness to support the White House's Ukraine policy, the Hill reports. "The Africans want to see a diplomatic solution to this conflict," the outlet writes with reference to an expert, adding that some countries express concern about sanctions and criticism of Russia, which they believe make it difficult to find a diplomatic solution. President Biden himself, The New York Times notes, sought to avoid associations to this effect in a quest for "injecting new energy" into its "apathetic relations" with the African countries, but failed.

A while ago George W. Bush was harnessing Africa with an initiative to fight AIDS; and Barack Obama promised large-scale electrification when meeting with the continent’s leaders eight years ago. But this time President of Rwanda Paul Kagame, when asked about at least one thing that had been put into practice since that summit, grinned and replied: "At least we had a hearty talk." The audience responded with knowing laughter.

Judging by the Washington summit’s outcome, the African leaders hardly believe the sincerity of Joe Biden's helping hand, conceiving that America needs their continent because of resources and ways to annoy Russia and China. The US media particularly indicate that those attending the summit have found it hard to give credence to Washington’s words, as it allocates more money to Ukraine alone (over $66 billion in 2022) as compared to all the African countries combined. "They don't consider us a long-term partner," The Hill quotes Cameron Hudson, an expert with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "They don't believe that they can rely on us."

In conclusion, let’s say a few words about Russia's shift towards Africa. Just a reminder: in October 2019, Sochi hosted an unprecedented Russia–Africa summit. In terms of speeches delivered by heads of state and government, it was compared to the UN General Assembly high-level weeks. Back then, analysts dubbed the event an important move in the context of Moscow's return to the region it has historically had strong ties with.

Today, Moscow's tasks in Africa are reduced to finding promising cooperation niches and creating footholds for expanding economic and political interaction. These issues will certainly top the agenda at the second Russia–Africa summit set to take place next year. Amid growing US and EU pressure against Russia that are striving to restrain its development by any means, Moscow can and should use every opportunity to successfully address its own problems and consolidate positions in the international arena. As revealed by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s summer tour of Africa, Moscow still enjoys significant influence and authority on the continent.