US offers African countries to invest without ‘unmanageable debt’

The United States Secretary of State, Anthony Blinken, confirmed in Dakar that his country is ready to make investments in African countries without “unsustainable debt,” on the last day of his first tour of the continent.

Blinken signed, today, in the Senegalese capital, where he arrived Friday from Nigeria, several contracts to build infrastructure with the Senegalese government, estimated at a value of one thousand million dollars.

He stressed at the conference that “our projects in Senegal, and this to me is the most important thing, are based on our values ​​that we share as democracies, such as transparency, accountability, rule of law, competition and innovation.” Click.

“We hope to create local jobs, protect workers and the environment, and reduce corruption, all without burdening countries with unsustainable debts,” the head of US diplomacy added.

Blinken made the announcement after asserting Friday that the US government is seeking “more effective cooperation” with Africa that treats the continent as a “great geostrategic power,” but also with veiled criticism of China’s agreements on infrastructure in the region, which have been created. Large debts in the coffers of many African countries.

He cautioned that these agreements can, at times, be “opaque, coercive, burden countries with uncontrollable debts, environmentally devastating, and do not always benefit the people who already live there.”

“We’ll do things differently,” Blinken said.

The comments come at a time when China, which wrested economic leadership from Washington in Africa in 2009, maintains its position as the main trading partner of the African continent in an increasingly indisputable way.

Senegal will host at the end of this month an important summit between Africa and China that will try to strengthen cooperation between the two blocs and commit to sustainable development.