No matter how you look at it, President Buhari has to create a United African Presidential Front to work with the Biden administration

Ayo Akinfe

(1) Looking at the collegiate approach President Biden is adopting, it is crystal clear that the way forward over the next four years will be team politics

(2) President Biden has already cancelled the bilateral Keystone XL Pipeline contract with Canada in favour of the more multilateral approach as epitomised by the Paris Climate Agreement

(3) Africa accounts for 18% of the world’s population but just 3% of global trade. Our continent has a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of $2.6trn compared with US ($19.4trn), China ($12trn), Japan ($4.8trn), Germany ($3.6trn), India ($2.65trn) and the UK ($2.63trn)

(4) It makes little economic sense for President Biden to go doing deals with each of the 54 African nations. Their economies are to small and weak for any worthwhile trade deal

(5) Africa needs to come up with a united approach that will involve US investment across three of four countries at once. We maybe have 54 countries on paper but economically, their combined GDP is less than that of one nation state

(6) For instance, I would like our African presidents to strike a deal with the US automobile industry that will see gearboxes manufactured in South Africa, engines made in Nigeria, an assembly plant opened in DR Congo and a bodywork facility opened in Egypt

(7) Can you imagine how comprehensive a trade deal we would be able to get if the presidents of Nigeria, Egypt, South Africa, Ethiopia, Angola, Ghana, Rwanda, DR Congo and Morocco sat down in the White House to thrash out a joint deal with the chairmen of Ford, General Motors and Chrysler? We could sign the biggest foreign direct investment plan in the history of mankind

(8) Just take the coronavirus pandemic for instance. It is totally senseless to try and negotiate individual African supply agreements. Our porous borders would make a nonsense of any such unilateral plans

(9) With the end of Trumpism, we are seeing an end to isolationism and selfishness. It is only the UK that is still towing this path of self-destruction with Brexit but I expect that to unravel soon as the realities of the madness hits home. I can see the UK re-applying to join the European Union within the next five years

(10) I hope President Buhari seizes the moment and gets in their fast. Just imagine how many investors Africa would attract if she always presented a united front to investors. Would Pfizer for instance would have been able to reject an African Covid-19 combined plan?