The US Treasury Department’s second-highest official will take a simple message to a handful of African countries later this month: The sooner Russia ends its war in Ukraine, the better off you are.
“Our goal, frankly, is make very clear to these countries, from an economic standpoint, that your economic interests are aligned with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ending as soon as possible,” Deputy Treasury Secretary Wally Adeyemo said in a podcast aired Wednesday.
In an interview on the “Pod Save the World” podcast, Adeyemo said he plans to visit Ghana, Nigeria and an additional country in east Africa in March.
He said he would emphasize the impact of Russia’s invasion on food and energy prices that have hit developing countries hardest.
He plans to tell African governments that the US is “trying to do everything we can to reduce the costs they’re facing due to this war, and they should be asking Russia to do the same.”
Adeyemo’s travels will follow a visit by Secretary Janet Yellen to Africa in January when she visited Senegal, Zambia and South Africa.
His stop in Ghana will also likely draw attention to stalled international efforts to provide debt relief to poor countries in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
Ghana recently applied for assistance under the Group of 20’s Common Framework, a program designed to bring Western creditors around the same negotiating table with China and to agree on restructuring deals that treat all creditors equally.
China — the largest bilateral creditor country to developing countries — has slowed the program with its insistence that Zambia’s debt restructuring includes loans from multilateral development banks. The US and other countries have rejected the proposal.
