WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden is hosting nearly 50 African leaders this week in an effort to show “renewed commitment” to a continent routinely neglected by the West and battered by coups and wars, poverty and the pandemic, but that also has seen vast Chinese investment in numerous nations.
It is the first U.S.-Africa summit held since 2014 and takes place in the shadow of Russia’s war on Ukraine, which has diverted money and attention along with sending food and oil prices soaring around the world — nowhere more than on the African continent.
Administration officials acknowledge Africa has not always been at the top of Washington’s agenda — Biden has yet to visit except for a short stopover in Egypt at the U.N. Climate Change Conference last month — and that they have faced criticism for inattention.
