Vice President Kamala Harris offers a toast at the state dinner held in her honor at Jubilee House, Accra, Ghana, March 27. Photo courtesy of the White House
By Julie Mellin
On March 26, Vice President Kamala Harris embarked on her first trip to Africa since taking office—a historic three-country visit that brought her back to the continent for the first time since visiting as a child. Participating in bilateral, public, and private sector engagements, as well as meetings with young innovators and entrepreneurs, Harris built upon the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, held in December 2022, to advance some of the United States’ most important policy issues on the ground while strengthening people-to-people ties with Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia.
The White House released the U.S. Strategy towards Sub-Saharan Africa in August 2022, which clearly identifies Africa’s geopolitical importance not only to U.S. national security interests on the continent, but to address shared global challenges. During the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, Harris lauded Africa as being in “the future business,” sharing the United States’ belief that African innovation and ingenuity—much of it carried out by young people—would help tackle global challenges like the impacts of climate change and economic disparity.
Coming three months after the Summit, Harris’ visit to Africa reflected the United States’ commitment to partnering with African countries to find shared solutions to global challenges. Harris’ goals for the trip were clear from the outset: to lift up a future-oriented and optimistic vision for the continent and underscore a shared commitment to good governance; deliver billions of dollars in public and private sector investment to advance women’s empowerment, climate solutions, and digital inclusion; spur further investment in African innovation and ingenuity to build on the president’s commitments at the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit; and highlight broad and deep people-to-people ties, including with the African diaspora. Large interagency teams at Embassies Accra, Dar es Salaam, and Lusaka were integral to the success of Harris’ visit and crafted programs to reflect the full breadth of the U.S.-Africa relationship.
In all three countries that Harris visited—Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia—she met with presidents and citizens, including entrepreneurs, farmers, and musicians, to discuss the United States’ investment in the future of Africa, and how these relationships will continue to shift from an orientation of what the U.S. can do for Africa to what the U.S. and Africa can do together in partnership. Upon arrival in Ghana, March 26, Harris delivered remarks highlighting the importance of the continent of Africa, its people, and its future. The next day, she met with President Nana Akufo-Addo and announced new U.S. initiatives to strengthen U.S. partnership with Ghana and regional security.
Throughout her time in Ghana, Harris seized opportunities to elevate the role of entrepreneurship, innovation, and the contributions of the African diaspora in Ghana’s growth. She met with six Ghanaian women entrepreneurs in a roundtable table discussion at The Mix, a woman-owned co-working space in Accra. In her remarks, Harris announced more than $1 billion in public and private initiatives focused on the economic empowerment of women. At a state dinner hosted by President Akufo-Addo and first lady Rebecca Akufo-Addo, Harris highlighted the rich and long-standing connections between the people of Ghana and the United States, demonstrated by a delegation of more than 30 members of the African diaspora to Ghana who joined.
At Accra’s iconic Black State Gate, Harris addressed thousands of young Ghanaians who had gathered to hear her speak.
“It is your spark, your creativity, and your determination that will drive the future,” she said. “And with that, African ideas and innovations will shape the future of the world.”
Following her speech, Harris traveled to Cape Coast Castle, a central site of the Atlantic slave trade. In powerful and personal remarks outside of the castle, she reflected on the profound impact of slavery on both the United States and Ghana, noting that the intertwined U.S.-Africa history is a source of both pain and pride, and must be remembered and taught in its entirety.
The strong bilateral relationship between the United States and Tanzania was also a focus of the visit, anchored in the friendship forged between Harris and Tanzania’s President Samia Suluhu Hassan when she hosted Hassan at the White House in April 2022. Hassan is currently the only African woman head of state and head of government. At a televised joint press briefing, Harris applauded the Tanzanian president’s leadership in opening political space and undertaking critical democratic reforms. Later that day, Hassan hosted an iftar (the evening meal that marks the break in fasting during Ramadan) in honor of Harris’ visit.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassy compounds in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam that killed 224 people. Accompanied by U.S. Ambassador to Tanzania Michael Battle and former Ambassador Charles Stith, the named Ambassador at the time of the attack, Harris visited the Hope Out of Sorrow memorial site at the National Museum of Tanzania that honors the victims of the bombings. In addition to laying a wreath at the memorial, she met and listened to the stories of eight current Embassy Dar es Salaam employees who survived the attack.
Supporting youth entrepreneurship again emerged as a prominent theme in Tanzania. To promote the visionary work of young Tanzanians in the technology sector, Harris visited SNDBX, a collaborative co-working hub and incubator and home to many young leaders in Tanzania’s startup ecosystem. At SNDBX, she heard from a group of entrepreneurs about their creative solutions to some of the continent’s major challenges—fragmented supply chains, sustainable energy, and youth employment. She learned about Ramani, a Tanzanian startup that builds software for micro-distribution centers to address supply chain issues and which recently secured $32 million in Series A funding (a type of venture capital investment). She saw firsthand how the WAGA Tanzania company is transforming recycled batteries into reliable, sustainable, and affordable power solutions. Harris also announced a range of commitments to further strengthen the U.S.-Tanzania relationship.
Over the two days immediately preceding Harris’ arrival to Zambia, the country served as the African co-host of President Joe Biden’s second Summit for Democracy, hosting dozens of senior government officials from across the continent. U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona led the U.S. delegation to the Summit, becoming the third U.S. government cabinet official to travel to Zambia in 2023. Since the August 2021 election of President Hakainde Hichilema, who has been widely recognized for his administration’s democratic and economic reform agendas, Zambia’s role as an example to follow in the region has grown. With increased focus on the global stage comes increased attention from Washington, and Embassy Lusaka rose to the occasion to support both the Summit for Democracy and Harris’ historic visit. Collaborating closely with the White House and with Zambian government counterparts, Embassy Lusaka developed a program for Harris that utilized her influential voice to make clear to the Zambian people that democracy pays dividends—a vital message in maintaining public support for democratic reforms in Zambia.
Harris’ first stop in Zambia was a bilateral meeting with Hichilema. Greeting Harris on the steps of State House, Hichilema opened his arms and said, “Welcome home,” a reference to Harris’ visit to Lusaka in the 1960s when she was a young girl.
At a joint press conference, the two leaders emphasized their countries’ shared commitment to Zambia’s democratic reform and economic reconstruction, noting that increased investment from the United States will be vital. Harris and Hichilema repeated calls for all official bilateral creditors to support meaningful debt restructuring for Zambia—a key issue in a country where external debt is more than $17 billion.
In addition to her bilateral engagements, Harris also visited the site where her grandparents’ house once stood when they lived in Zambia. Working with the Zambian government and others and going through land records, Embassy Lusaka identified the site of the home.
While in Zambia, Harris announced more than $7 billion in private sector commitments for climate resilience, adaptation, and mitigation across Africa. To highlight these, she then traveled to Panuka Farm outside of Lusaka and spoke with farmers there about climate-smart agriculture and innovative techniques to adapt to the climate crisis. At the end of her trip, in a Lusaka roundtable with U.S. government, private sector, and philanthropic leaders, Harris highlighted the power of public-private partnerships and issued a call to action to the private sector and philanthropic leaders to advance digital inclusion and access in Africa, in support of the aims of the Digital Transformation with Africa initiative that Biden announced in December 2022.
Recognizing the importance of African leadership and collaboration in addressing shared challenges, Biden said the United States is “all in on Africa” and announced plans, working with Congress, to invest at least $55 billion in Africa over the next three years. Harris’ trip was a major milestone in the U.S. government-wide effort to bring that vision to life.
Julie Mellin is the deputy public affairs officer at Embassy Lusaka.
