A US Pivot to Southern Africa?

An ongoing Zimbabwe Zambia spat draws attention Washingtons regional intentions

An ongoing diplomatic spat between the Southern African countries of Zambia & Zimbabwe is helping to shed light on how the US is reconsolidating its position on the continent. After embarrassing reversals in West Africa and the Sahel by Russian and Russian aligned elements  the US now seeks to strengthen its existing relationships and forge new ones with an eye not just on enhancing its security ties but also beat out its rivals in access to key resources. 

Relations between the southern African states of Zambia and Zimbabwe have been souring for some years, but recent accusations against the Zambian government on the world stage have now brought issues to a head. Earlier earlier this month, while attending the St Petersburg International Economic Forum, Zimbabwean President Emmerson Mnagagwa publicly inferred that the leadership of neighbouring Zambia were developing military ties to the United States in a deliberate effort to isolate and threaten Zimbabwe's ruling regime. 

Claims of US bases on Zambian soil and sinister plots against ZANU PF rule in Zimbabwe can easily be waved away as baseless and paranoid rumours, reliant on hearsay about weapons stashes reportedly seen at Zambian airports. However, these sentiments nevertheless do highlight the growing awareness of the US diplomatic and security presence in the region.. 

For years  Africa had taken a back seat as a secondary priority in US foreign policy, weighed down as it was by more pressing concerns in the Middle East & the Asia-Pacific. Even as the PRC gained an incontestable lead as a trading partner and key funder of local infrastructure, the US remained confident that it would always be able to differentiate itself as the continent's key security partner. No More. The startling success of Russian And Russia backed proxies across the Sahel region in recent years , aswell as  the Kremlin having achieved defence cooperation agreements with 19 different African governments since 2014, now call this role into serious question. To maintain its relevance, Washington is now forced to act.. 

2024 will doubtlessly go down in history as a milestone year when the US started taking its African partnerships more seriously. Throughout April & May , Africom(The United States Africa Command,  oversaw the African lion military exercises in Tunisia. This series of exercises drew in 8000 personnel from 27 African countries, prominently featuring local allies including.Ghana, Morocco, Senegal and Tunisia,The presence of these countries make sense as many have been US or western allies generally for many decades, but Washington has also sought to bring new partners onboard. 

On the 24th of May of this year  Kenya became the first country in sub saharan africa and the 19th country worldwide to achieve much sought after. “Major Non-NATO US ally status” This designation means that Kenya could now join african countries like Morocco, Egypt & Tunisia in not only gaining preferential access to US hardware but also enjoying certain economic benefits, including the chance at cooperation with UUS DoD Research & development programmes and the ability of local firms to bid for maintenance contracts for the US armed forces. 

 Kenyan police on joint patrol with Haitian Swat team members. Kenya's surprising role as a peacekeeper in Haiti highlights the growing ties between it and the United States.                                                                                             Image Source : Reuters

These are all significant milestones, but it is the growing US involvement in southern Africa that has the Zimbabweans so concerned. In early July , the United States & Botswana will jointly host the first ever Africom conference on African soil in Gaborone. The event will see the attendance of African defense chiefs from over 30 countries and feature extensive discussion on how the United States can assist local countries in combating extremism. Botswana is set to gain more from this relationship than simply the prestige of hosting the conference. It is reported that the US air force has already gifted their local counterparts a Hercules C-130 transport aircraft ,and plans are underway to host a series of joint military exercises which will be dubbed the “Southern Accord” 

Botswana is not the only southern African country that has been drawn closer to Washington in recent years, besides the previously mentioned ties to Zambia, the US security establishment has also been courting nearby Angola, selling itself as a partner in maritime security and peacekeeping as well as pushing Angola to take a more active role as a mediator in the DRC. In Mozambique too the united states has extended its first tentative olive branch, providing US$22m to help fund ongoing operations against islamist militants in the northern cabo delgado region. 

In what would seem like some in the region to be a highly suspicious coincidence, these diplomatic overtures have coincided with an unexpected turn by the South African ruling party the, African National Congress, who after a disappointing election result in June caused some upset when they approached the pro western and pro free market Democratic Alliance opposition party to form a coalition government at the expense of more reliably pro Russian political elements. It is therefore not hard to see, from the perspective of the Zimbabweans, why current US diplomatic efforts seem to point to a strategy of encirclement. 

In truth however the Zimbabweans appear to have misdiagnosed the actual US agenda , far from staging a coup, its critical minerals, including copper and cobalt in the region that Washington is primarily after. Readers might recall earlier this year when headlines were dominated by the ongoing saga of BHP’s attempts at acquiring Anglo, one of southern africa's oldest and most established mining companies with significant copper assets in South America.  

This failed bid was but a small part of a much bigger effort, currently being conducted at the highest levels  to secure supplies of copper and other minerals key to the ongoing transition away from fossil fuels. While China already all but dominates the mining sector in the DRC, there is still scope for valuable US acquisitions in the Zambian copperbelt to the south, where Washington has now all but dropped the gauntlet, rushing to outcompete China in acquisition of zambian mining sites. Amid this backdrop It can be no coincidence then that Zambia has also benefited from a recent IMF loan, an act of generosity whose auspicious timing can be nothing but a quid pro quo. 

Here Washington's new ties to Angola also come into play. A key part of this mineral acquisition strategy is the Lobito Corridor, a rail line revitalisation project which is set to dramatically streamline the export process between the Zambian- DRC copper belt and the angolan atlantic port of Lobito. The United States has wielded all its diplomatic might to get the difficult project funded, with interested parties now included major commodity giants like Glencore & Trafigura aswell as partner countries in the European Union. 

Though Washington has achieved a marked head start, they are unlikely to remain the only contenders in the region for long. As Mnagagwas statements in St Petersburg intonated. there are many local factions who long for the US’s rivals to become similarly involved. Far from being a quiet backwater, it now appears that the SADC region is set to become yet another contested region in the emerging new cold war between the world's great powers.