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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning again, everyone. Here's one way you may not have realized that the United States is competing with Russia and China. It's over the loyalty and general ties with leaders from Africa. Today, President Biden is meeting with 49 African leaders as part of a three-day US-Africa Summit. Now, this is the first summit like this since 2014 when Obama was President. Trump didn't hold one.

As Africa becomes more important geopolitically in ways having to do with China and Russia that we'll get into, the US is hoping to strengthen its ties throughout the continent. The White House has committed $55 billion toward investments in economic and security and health funding for the continent. The President has also expressed his support for allowing the African Union to become a permanent member of the G20. We'll explain why that might matter to either side and here to explain what's happening at the summit and why the US wants to strengthen its relationships with African countries, the New York Times article on this says Biden is hoping to impress the African leaders. Our guest is Yinka Adegoke, editor of Semafor Africa.

Semafor is the new digital media company founded by the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, former New York Times columnist, Ben Smith, and the former CEO of Bloomberg Media Group, Justin Smith. Yinka, thanks for joining us. Welcome to WNYC.

Yinka Adegoke: Thank you for having me, Brian. Great to be here.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, Africa gets too little coverage in this country.

Yinka Adegoke: Indeed.

Brian Lehrer: If you are an immigrant from any country in Africa, first priority for you on the phones in this segment, or if you have ties to any country in Africa, 212-433-WNYC. Tell everyone else what's important to you or your country of origin in US policy toward Africa generally, or this summit in particular, or ask our guests a question, 212-433-WNYC, 212 433-9692 or tweet @BrianLehrer. Yinka, give most of our listeners a one-on-one on this summit. What is Biden hoping to accomplish? What are the African leaders hoping to accomplish?

Yinka Adegoke: Thanks, Brian. I think the big picture it's almost one of those, the United States is back type of moments. We had last summit as you said in 2014 under the Obama administration. The United States has always had this very distant relationship with Africa or with African countries. We, being the United States, will show up when there's a crisis or some problem, and put lots of aid money into things, but never really formed a proper partnership, particularly an economic one, despite the huge amounts of poverty and difficulties in many countries.

There was too much of an emphasis over the years on worrying about democratic targets and the rest of it, which are of course very important. Big part of the problem has always been that you're always going to have problems with democracy and human rights when people are living in poverty. The important thing about this summit is that you get African leaders together. You sit down, you have discussions, you start to build better relationships across a continent that's become increasingly important in geopolitical terms, in security terms, and increasingly in economic terms. In demographic terms.

I'm sorry. I know we're going to get into that. The hope for him is that if I'm in the Biden administration and they released a new US Africa policy back in August, and it was very aspirational and hive-minded and touching on many of these points just raise and saying, "Yes, we want to work with Africa. We want to be your partner. We want to work with you, not tell you what to do." All the good stuff you'd expect but now they've got to deliver. They've really got to start to show some substance to that. One of the things that some of the reports and I did over the last couple of weeks that people tell me from both sides is, the way this really gets to work is to do this regularly.

This is not you can't have a forum every 80 years.

Brian Lehrer: A one-off.

Yinka Adegoke: Nothing significance goes great for that. It's really about the change in the tenor of the relationship that the United States has with the continent.

Brian Lehrer: Well, what's at stake for the US? Why should our listeners, let's say around the country care? When you talk about Africa being more geopolitically important, more demographically important, more economically important, how so to the United States? I think the easier thing for a lot of Americans to get their heads around is we're important to them because the US is a superpower, whether it's military or climate. The US pollutes Africa starves, in that direction, but why is Africa important to the United States?

Yinka Adegoke: Well, it is important because it's the future of, frankly, the world specifically, in terms of demographics by 2050, which always sounds like a long way away, but it's not really. By 2050, one in four workers in the world would be African. The working-age population of many of the wealthiest countries in the world, including in the United States, keeps on shrinking as a percentage of the population.

We are going to need workers from the continent. Then you think about if you allow these countries, there are 54 of them, to just drift and continue to have these economic problems and economic challenges, eventually what seems like a long, far-off problem becomes an American problem because this is where the more powerful, problematic countries in the world will go to supply arms and supply weapons which will eventually be used against American citizens or the United States itself. You've got to think long-term. You can't just think about in the short-term for today because it's all well and good that Africa is all the way over there and it has nothing to do with us.

Eventually, these are going to become American problems. The way you avoid that is not to look at the continent of the problem. It's to look at the opportunity. If you have today nearly a billion and a half people to partner with and sell to, and market with and build new types of companies and innovate and experiment, it's to the benefits of not just to Africans, but also to Americans over the long-term. There just has to be a longer-term thinking about this rather than a short-term solution.

This is a problem we have to solve today. We can't solve this problem today. It's a solve a long-term partnership, which I think the United States now is starting to get. At least if you look at the policy on paper, we'll see the deliverables over the next few days and see where it's going.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you just joining us, we're talking about the three-day summit President Biden with leaders of a number of African nations that is now underway with our guest, Yinka Adegoke, editor of Semafor Africa, the news organization part of Semafor which you may not have even heard of yet. New digital media company founded by the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed, and former New York Times columnist Ben Smith, and former CEO of Bloomberg Media Group, Justin Smith.

One of the things that I mentioned in the intro was consideration of a possible seat in the G20 for some nation or group of nations from Africa, the G20 being the 20 most important economic countries in the world. I think a caller has a comment about that. Yukoba in Pennsylvania, you're on WNYC. Hello, Yukoba.

Yukoba: Yes, Brian good morning. Thank you for the show. My question is that the African Union is not a country. African Union is the 54 country for one seat. Why now? Why the sudden interest of Africa? Obama made the same promise, nothing come out of it.

Why now? The only reason is that because Africa is open up to other countries, to China, to Russia, to Turkey, all those country now. All those promise made almost every 5, 10 years, and nothing come out of it. One seat for one continent is ridiculous, and we know the African Union USA they don't defend African interests. They don't even care about African interests. African Union does not defend African interests. The average African doesn't recognize themself in African Union. I think it's just ridiculous. That was my comment. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you very much. I'm sure a lot of people feel like him. Yinka, on a number of points that he brought up there, including yes the African Union is not a country, it's 54 countries.

Yinka Adegoke: Yes. I think this is to be fair to those who manage these geopolitical issues, it might be 54 countries, but the 54 countries weren't even represented at all. Barely, I think that South Africa is the one member. There was no permanent membership for Africa in any sense. This is a start. You have to start somewhere. If you think about the dysfunction of the United Nations, the difficulties of building consensus, it's created a need for all these other multilateral forums to make quick decisions on some of the big issues.

The G20 has become really crucial to this. To have 1.4 billion people not have any sort of permanent representation where the really big decisions are being made. It was not susceptible either. Complaining about having only one representation for 54 countries is fine. You totally get it but not being there at all, it's an even bigger problem.

Brian Lehrer: What's the competition between the US, China, and Russia aspect of this? I see the African leaders, some of them, or many of them who are meeting with Biden, have been traveling around the world to other diplomatic meetings as well, including in China and Russia, and the EU. This is being framed in the US press in large degree, as I'm sure you're seeing, or maybe writing yourself that oh, the US needs to keep up with China especially and also with Russia in terms of influence in Africa. What's that about? What are they competing for?

Yinka Adegoke: It's really interesting. On Monday just had our Semafor Africa summit, and we had some US government representatives. We had the deputy Commerce Secretary, Don Graves, and we also had the Chinese ambassador to the United States Qin Gang. It was interesting to listen to the way they claimed it. Even the United States totally gets it.

Then freely admits we need to improve our relationships with Africa and we recognize that. Frankly, we're pretty much playing catch-up with China. What China has done is basically been very straightforward and worked with governments the way they want to be worked with. There are problems with this, I must point out, in the sense that they're not questioning anything about human rights or any of those issues with these United States is a lot more cautious but at some point you have to understand that you have to meet people where they are rather than being frankly paternalistic and just telling people how to be able to work with you.

You sometimes have to meet people where they are in order to really move things forward and be productive and really have an impact on the continent. That's the bit I think that the United States is starting to get, is starting to change. That they realize that the Chinese in particular are offering infrastructure loans and helping to build roads and bridges and sorts of presidential villas and all this other stuff.

Brian Lehrer: What they call the Belt and Road Initiative.

Yinka Adegoke: This is a part of their Belt and Road Initiative.

Brian Lehrer: From China throwing a lot of money, some of it as loans that might get some African countries into debt problems from what I understand, but also a lot of funding of, like you say, infrastructure to establish a Chinese presence in some of these countries. When you talk about how China doesn't look so much at the human rights records of the various governments that it's getting involved with, and maybe the US has to get with that in order to compete, that's tough for a lot of Americans, for a lot of American progressives. There's pushback on, Ugandan president Museveni being included in the summit with Biden based on his human rights records with respect to LGBT and other things. Are we supposed to just ignore that?

Yinka Adegoke: No, we can't ignore that. We also have to be realistic about how we work with countries as in the context of United States specifically. They can go on and on about it, but that's not going to work with many of these countries. They have to figure this out just like they do in so many other areas of politics and geopolitics.

You have to sometimes work with people you don't want to work with in the way you would want to work with them. You can't just ignore and allow your direct travels like China to just be able to completely redirect and reframe the conversations for you. I think the last administration tried to reframe the conversations about debt traps and all this kind of stuff.

Yes, some of the countries probably took on more than they should have. It's unhelpful to spend time focusing on that because what the United States always has to be thinking about is, well, what's the alternative? What are we offering and how are we getting to change these conversations ourselves instead of reacting to China or Russia or whoever it is. It's not just the Chinese, the Turks are in the Japanese, everyone's trying to seize the opportunity of partnering or building in Africa. We should see it that way rather than it's being about our own geopolitical agenda.

Brian Lehrer: Jude in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Hi Jude.

Jude: Hello Brian. Thanks for taking my call. I just want to make a contribution and possibly ask a question too, but first of all, I just want to say that it's good America finally woke up because a lot of African countries would have actually preferred to deal with America instead of China and all that.

The only thing is like I saw one time when there was a meeting with some American envoy, which led by Nigerian labor minister, where he was saying that America always want to dictate for people and does not regard for their culture when they want to deal with them. That Chinese and Chinese don't do that. They don't care about your culture. They work with you. They don't try to impose anything on you. I think America should take that to cognizance now.

Then I also recommend that America should not really encourage those leaders who have been in power like monarchy because those country are places where you have high level of human rights abuse in Africa. When you have somebody who is 80 years old and he still want to run-- that's absolute nonsense. America should identify the ones that have true democracy, though we don't have this in Africa, but this we have countries like South Africa, Nigeria, and maybe Egypt, where they run election after every four years, where presidents don't stay more than two times in office.

I think they should take that into consideration too because I think all those people who sit in power, they're just a waste of space. If you look at them, none of them is actually doing anything apart from maybe Rwanda. I think I don't encourage that Chinese kind of governance in any way.

Brian Lehrer: It's complicated with what Yinka was just saying, Jude, if the United States has all these conditions, the government has to be clean and this way and that way, then it's harder to establish the economic ties that might actually help the populations of those countries. That's the argument on the other side. Jude, what do you think?

Jude: Okay. Well, I think a lot of these countries will want to get on board and I think because a lot of them want to get on board so that they can have that tie with America, which can also strengthen their economy in different ways. That can also push some of those people to wake up and realize that they need to force some of these leaders out either by legislation or whatever.

There was one country that, I think it was Guinea-Bissau or so, they had a ridiculous election recently for someone that has been in power for a very long time, and then some hypocrites are saying that that's how they wanted it. We know that is not true. That's not the wish of the people.

Brian Lehrer: Jude, thank you. Thank you very much. Yinka, can go ahead.

Yinka Adegoke: What I love about Jude's comments is that he really captures the complication of this issue. What is America or any other country supposed to go to another country and just dictate to them who should be in power or not? Sometimes some of these countries genuinely want these leaders. We know there are some that's quite obvious that people-- that they are probably ruling against the will of the people, so to speak.

It's really complicated and yet there are millions and millions and millions of people, and if you just turn your back completely on these countries you are cementing poverty when you could actually really make significant impact. It's very, very complicated. For a superpower like the United States to turn its back completely on the continent is the business really not acceptable.

Brian Lehrer: Let me sneak in one more call before we run out of time. Apologies to those of you who we won't have time to get to. Adu in Manhattan, you're on WNYC. Hi, Adu.

Amadou: Amadou.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, Amadou. I'm sorry. I had it as Adu, I apologize. Hi, Amadou.

Amadou: Not a problem. Thank you for taking my call and I really appreciate this conversation you are having regarding Africa. Yes, my point here it's a very good thing to have the United States interested in the African continent, but what I would like to say here is I remember when Obama came to Senegal and he was talking about the social issue regarding gay marriage and everything. There was a pushback.

What I want to say there it's good to come there, to go to Africa, but at the same time to give them room to evolve in social issues. If they come in want to say, "Hey, we want you to do this," there's going to be a pushback from the general public.

The other point I would like also to talk about is like we have French that dominated the western part of Africa like Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, and all of that. Today, France is not welcomed in Africa. Why? Because like the previous caller, what he said it was like France is backing the heads of states that the general public see as an authoritarian people who don't respect to democracy. If they come and do the same thing there it doesn't matter how much they will spend there, but it's going to be frustration, it's going to be instability. I don't see how that can serve the interest of the United States.

Brian Lehrer: Amadou, thank you. I know you have to go in under a minute Yinka, but anything you want to say with respect to Amadou's comment? He brought up France there. I don't know if you want to give a last comment on the historical overtones of the France-Morocco World Cup match.

Yinka Adegoke: [laughs] Very quickly I really agreed with Amadou's comments on the LGBT and allowing countries to evolve in their own social-- because countries they all do. The United States today on LGTBT issues is not the same as it was as recently as 20 years ago. I agree with that point. [unintelligible 00:23:51] it's fascinating. It always feels like the-- even the French team itself it has many deep connections to its colonial past that it'll be interesting to see how this plays out. It also shows the way the world is changing. I think it's fascinating what we once thought would never happen is possible now and I enjoy that when I watch these matches.

Brian Lehrer: Go Morocco, Yinka Adegoke editor of Semafor Africa. I really enjoyed the conversation, obviously, so did our callers. Thank you very, very much.

Yinka Adegoke: Thank you very much for your time, Brian. Thank you.

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