Pompeo Warns About China’s ’empty promises’ To Africa

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has closed a three-nation Africa
tour with a thinly-veiled swipe at China as he talked up Washington’s ability
to stimulate growth of the economy.

Pompeo said in speech to diplomat and business leaders that countries
should be wary of authoritarian regimes with empty promises, they breed
corruption, dependency

“They run the risk that the prosperity and sovereignty and
progress that Africa so needs and desperately wants won’t happen.” Said
Pompeo.

Pompeo in his remarks did not explicitly mention China Africa’s
largest trading partner but analysts predicted ahead of his trip that he
would attempt to pitch the US as an alternative source of investment.

Early today Pompeo
name-checked US companies operating in all three countries on his Africa tour,
the first by a US cabinet-level official in 19 months: Bechtel in Senegal,
Chevron in Angola and Coca-Cola in Ethiopia.

He also hailed the free market generally, blasting “failed
socialist experiments of years past” in places like Zimbabwe and Tanzania.

And he criticized a proposed constitutional amendment in South
Africa that would allow private property to be expropriated without
compensation a plan that seeks to overcome inequalities set down in the
apartheid era.