Lusaka, January 23 (BNA): US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen is in Zambia on the second leg of her African tour, a stop aimed at boosting US investments and relations while she is in a capital clearly dominated by the Chinese dollar.
Visitors to Lusaka arriving at the refurbished Kenneth Kaunda International Airport see the facility expanded in 2015 with Chinese funding. A trip into the city passes billboards and newly built businesses bearing Chinese signs, more evidence of Beijing’s influence and increasing competition with the United States.
But the country’s growth has come with a heavier debt burden. Zambia became the first pandemic-era African country to default when it failed to repay a $42.5 million bond in November 2020. Negotiations on how to handle the debt burden are ongoing, the Associated Press reports.
How Zambia’s debt is renegotiated with the Chinese will provide a test case for China’s tolerance of other heavily indebted countries in debt distress.
The issue of debt will be a topic of discussion on Monday when Yellen meets Zambia’s president and finance minister to press the Chinese to continue negotiations. You will also tour pharmaceutical manufacturing facilities benefiting from US investment to showcase what you consider to be a model of success.
“Many African countries are now suffering from unsustainable debt buildup. This is an undeniable problem. Much of it is related to Chinese investments in Africa,” Yellen said Saturday in an interview with The Associated Press in Senegal, her first stop. African trip.
However, Yelin insists her trip is not about competition with China.
“We want to deepen our engagement, and we see a rapidly growing population of young people who need opportunities and economic growth,” she said.
“We have many government programs and international programs geared to help in infrastructure building efforts,” she said. “And when we do, we want to make sure that we don’t create the same problems that Chinese investments have sometimes created here.”
Yellen said the United States wants to invest in companies that have contracts that “are transparent, we have projects that are really delivering widespread benefits to the African people and don’t leave a legacy of unsustainable debt.”
Experts say a protracted debt crisis could permanently prevent countries like Zambia from recovering, and cause an entire nation to slide deeper into poverty and unemployment, excluding it from credit for future rebuilding.
To showcase the US efforts, the first stop of Yellen’s visit to Zambia was to tour Mylan Laboratories, a subsidiary of US pharmaceutical company Viatris. The laboratory was opened in 2010 with an investment of $10 million and manufactures drugs that treat malaria and HIV in the country and the region.
I also planned a stop at Zambia’s National Institute of Public Health, which is typical of its kind.
Rial