US President Donald Trump. FILE PHOTO | NMG
Summary
- Ray Washburne, president of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (Opic), is expected in meetings with Kenyan officials.
- Opic is specifically seeking to support the 470-kilometre, $3 billion Nairobi-Mombasa Expressway scheduled to begin construction this month
- The Trump team's support for the this scale-up marks a turnaround in the White House's approach to both Opic and Africa.
The head of a US government agency that helps private companies
do business in the developing world is due to arrive in Kenya on July 21
with a plan enabling the US to better compete with China's investments
in Africa.
Ray Washburne, president of the Overseas
Private Investment Corporation (Opic), is expected in meetings with
Kenyan officials to outline his agency's three-year, $1 billion "Connect
Africa" initiative.
Opic is specifically seeking to
support the 470-kilometre, $3 billion Nairobi-Mombasa Expressway
scheduled to begin construction this month under contract with the
US-based Bechtel engineering company.
In addition to
Connect Africa's backing for transportation and communications projects
on the continent, Mr Washburne will likely tout a proposal moving
through Congress to vastly expand Opic's portfolio.
“The Chinese are in with ports and railroads and highways --
things that we need to be in as a competitor," Mr Washburne said last
week during a stop in South Africa.
Crushing debt
He
also repeated Trump administration warnings that China's $126 billion
"Belt and Road" investment initiative is saddling African countries with
crushing levels of debt.
The new legislation recently
approved by the US House would double Opic's access to US government
credits to a total of $60 billion.
The Trump team's support for the this scale-up marks a turnaround in the White House's approach to both Opic and Africa.
President
Trump had previously sought to kill Opic. He has also offered few
positive remarks about Africa and has not launched any US programme of
the size and scope of President Clinton's Agoa trade preferences,
President George W Bush's anti-Aids initiative and President Barack
Obama's plan to bring electricity to some unlit parts of the continent.
The
proposal soon to be debated in the US Senate aims to modernise the
financial tools available to Opic, which has not been substantially
overhauled since its launch in 1971.
The agency would
also be renamed the International Development Finance Corporation to
highlight its primary purpose of helping US businesses make much greater
investments in Africa and other capital-poor regions of the world.
Positive appraisals
Independent
analysts of US development policy are offering positive appraisals of
the legislation, which could be signed into law this year.
"A
new modernised agency is necessary because private finance, rather than
aid, is the future," former Opic head Rob Mosbacher Jnr wrote recently.
"Foreign aid is the appropriate tool for tackling health challenges and responding to humanitarian crises," Mr Mosbacher asserted in a Forbes magazine commentary co-authored with Todd Moss, a senior figure at the Washington-based Centre for Global Development.
"Foreign aid is the appropriate tool for tackling health challenges and responding to humanitarian crises," Mr Mosbacher asserted in a Forbes magazine commentary co-authored with Todd Moss, a senior figure at the Washington-based Centre for Global Development.
"Development
finance — or the deployment of commercial capital for public policy
purposes — is the most potent weapon we have to expand markets, spread
the benefits of capitalism and spur private sector growth," the analysts
added.
Mr Washburne has also hailed the legislation, which he described in a statement last week as "essential."
With
its implementation, he said, "the US government will be better equipped
to drive economic growth in emerging markets and provide an alternative
to state-directed initiatives that can leave developing countries worse
off."
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