United States Trade Representative Katherine Tai on July 19th 2023 co-led a meeting of the U.S.-East African Community (EAC) Trade and Investment Framework Agreement (TIFA) Council composed of seven East Africa Community Partner States: The Republic of Burundi, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Republic of Kenya, the Republic of Rwanda, the Republic of South Sudan, the Republic of Uganda, and the United Republic of Tanzania.

While these year marks the fifteen-year anniversary of the U.S.-EAC TIFA, the July meeting comes at the back drop of the just concluded second round of negotiations  between Kenya and United States on the Strategic Trade and Investment Partnership (STIP), an agreement that aims to strengthen the two countries’ bilateral and investment relations.

The Analysis.

1. Is the United States is stridently upping its game, wielding heavy sticks in a smart-power game that blends the superpower’s immense soft-power and hard-power capacity as a grand strategy to roll-back China’s influence in Africa ?
2. Has the decline of the West and the rise of the rest fuelled doomsday strategies to out –compete China in Africa?
3. While development is the hardware, arts, culture and history are the software in Sino-Africa bilateral engagements. Is, China focusing on history (anchored on the dreams of a shared future) as strategy to impact development processes in Africa?