The Trump administration and the AU have started a bold journey that could ‘flip the script’ on decades of development cooperation.
The United States (US) and the African Union Commission (AUC) have announced a new plan to secure investment inflows and develop trade in Africa.
SIWG targets transport and trade corridors, energy networks, digital infrastructure, critical minerals and supply chains, regulatory harmonisation and trade facilitation. While driven largely by America’s motivation to secure long-term critical mineral supplies, as China has done, the agreement also envisages joint development of trade across African regions.
SIWG advances President Donald Trump’s declared intent to make trade, rather than aid, the centre of US-Africa relations. It also runs counter to his tendency to sidestep multilateral institutions. Unlike past US-backed investment initiatives, it positions the AU as a co-creator of projects aligned with its own master plan for African economic growth – Agenda 2063.
Beyond positioning the AU as a key actor in transnational infrastructure, SIWG could fill critical gaps in commercial, economic and strategic interconnections.
Inadequate roads, ports and other infrastructures crimp intra-African trade – the lowest intra-continental share worldwide – 15 per cent or less of Africa trade in recent years, compared to about 67 per cent for Europe. SIWG, together with EU support for corridors development, offers additional financial muscle that Africa can use to build key infrastructure and logistics networks across national and regional borders.
Projects envisioned by the AU’s Programme for Infrastructural Development in Africa (PIDA) could include the coastal highway from Lagos to Abidjan and the Lamu Port-South Sudan-Ethiopia Transport railway and pipeline linking South Sudan, Ethiopia and Kenya, among others.
While financial opportunities are essential, recent experience shows that key governance reforms are critical for African countries to leverage the promise of more jobs and shared prosperity from such agreements: accountability and rule of law, fiscal reforms and responsiveness to public needs.
Effectively, such an SIWG could channel American and African private investments into the fuller implementation of Agenda 2063 and, particularly, the African Continental Free Trade Area as an engine of shared prosperity and stability across the world’s fastest-growing continent.
SIWG also innovates for another reason. As African states pursue piecemeal, bilateral negotiations with the US on issues such as immigration and health assistance, SIWG can demonstrate the value of unified African engagement through the AUC. The Commission could be a convener and strategic coordinator of African actors and interface with US partners.
For SIWG to deploy its full potential, the AU and member states should take three sets of measures. First, the AU should quickly mobilise political leadership within the AUC to secure institutional buy-in and appoint African members to the Working Group.
Members should include not only representatives of AU institutions, but also of Africa’s business community and investors with experience in transnational infrastructure development. To ensure political buy-in, the AUC Chairperson should take the lead.
Second, the AU should identify for SIWG consideration a short list of the most bankable, viable and advantageous initiatives from among 69 priority projects already in development under the PIDA programme. That selection must be fast-tracked.
Third, inclusive oversight is imperative. To increase accountability and political backing, the AU could invite civil society groups, business communities, government policymakers and regional leaders to form ‘oversight coalitions’ around SIWG. These coalitions would ideally be ‘conflict-sensitive’ and help shape projects to avoid exacerbating local or regional conflicts and to ensure communities share the benefits.
Grounding infrastructure projects in local buy-in is not just vital to their economic success; it also strengthens African negotiators when wrangling over the details of investment deals with the US government and private sector.
Americans must overcome their own challenges, notably the distractions posed by upcoming US congressional elections and the looming hazards of war with Iran. Former senior US official on Africa relations, Lesley Anne Warner, recently noted Mr Trump’s throttling of vital ‘market-creating and business-enabling foreign assistance’ by closing the US Agency for International Development and reducing the State Department.
This makes establishing a broad, public-private coordination tool for SIWG’s implementation all the more pressing.
A US coordinating group should convene the main implementing agencies – the State Department, Development Finance Corporation, US Trade and Development Agency, and Export-Import Bank, together with business representatives such as the US Chamber of Commerce and Corporate Council on Africa. The coordination work must ensure transparency and accountability, and should include Congress to build support for codifying this initiative in law.
This innovative initiative will naturally encounter setbacks that will demand strategic patience, accountability and learning. A task on both sides will be to continually show transparency, promise and progress of proposed investments.
Another will be to steadily demonstrate that full African and AU co-creation of projects is, in fact, a greater African sharing of the burdens of their development. That requires African investors at the table, credible fiscal reforms, environmental viability and a commitment to security.
Moving quickly and achieving early successes will be essential to SIWG’s sustainability. Ensuring successful first projects will demonstrate the innovative dimension of this approach. It will create a dynamic for further rounds of profitmaking – and ‘Africa-building’ – between proven investment partners.
The Trump administration and AUC are beginning a bold journey to ‘flip the script’ of decades of development cooperation. It is not a risk-free paradigm shift, but one that holds transformative promise for the future of Americans and Africans if done right.
Joseph Sany, Senior Research Fellow and Paul-Simon Handy, Regional Director East Africa and Representative to the AU, Institute for Security Studies (ISS).
(This article was first published by ISS Today, a Premium Times syndication partner. We have their permission to republish).
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