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JOHANNESBURG — South Africa is under fire for hosting joint naval exercises with Russia during the one-year anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine, with critics saying it will be a propaganda victory for Moscow. But what does the third participant in the drills, China, have to gain from the tripartite exercises taking place this week?
Some analysts told VOA that, in China’s case, Exercise Mosi II, off South Africa’s east coast, is less about a real exchange of military prowess and more about important political and diplomatic optics.
“China has a lot to gain from these exercises,” said Paul Nantulya, from the Africa Center for Strategic Studies in Washington. “It is sending a very powerful signal to other African countries that in-person military training is now back on the table. … China and [its] People’s Liberation Army are basically back” after years of closed borders during the pandemic.
He said the drills were also sending a message to China’s competitors, namely the U.S., that Beijing has military clout in the region. The South Africa war games are taking place at almost the same time as the U.S. Army’s Exercise Justified Accord in Kenya and just after U.S.-led maritime exercises off the Gulf of Guinea.
They also take place amid heightened tensions between Washington and Beijing in the wake of the U.S. shooting down an alleged Chinese spy balloon and after Secretary of State Antony Blinken warned that China is considering supplying Russia with weapons for its war against Ukraine.
Priyal Singh, a senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) in Pretoria, had a similar assessment.
“This assists Beijing in illustrating to the West [and the world in general] that it has a foothold in the South Indian Ocean through its strong relations with South Africa. I believe this may be important to China, given the geopolitical contestations being played out across the Indian Ocean region,” Singh said in an email to VOA.
“I believe that the decision to proceed with these exercises was primarily driven by political considerations. Navies play important diplomatic and symbolic roles,” Singh’s ISS colleague Denys Reva added.
Darren Olivier, director at the African Defense Review, pointed out this week’s naval exercises off South Africa are limited in nature and “focused mostly on basic maneuvers and light gunnery.”
“It’s important to note that South Africa has a NATO-oriented operational and tactical doctrine that’s dissimilar to that of Russia and China, which inherently limits what can be done jointly, and unsurprisingly as a result, the exercise as described will not feature in-depth exploration or testing of any serious combat capabilities or procedures,” he said.
Asked by VOA what China seeks to gain from the exercises, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in the U.S. said “the joint maritime exercise held by the navies of the three countries in the southern waters of Africa is of great significance.”
“It will help deepen the exchanges and cooperation among the navies, improve their ability to jointly respond to maritime security threats, demonstrate their determination to maintain regional maritime peace and stability and their good will and strong capabilities to actively promote the building of an ocean community with a shared future.”

China, Russia and South Africa are all members of the BRICS grouping of emerging economies, which also includes India and Brazil.
Steve Tsang, director of the China Institute at SOAS University of London, said that for the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) to join their Russian counterparts “in an exercise far away from China is highly beneficial,” as the Russian navy is more modernized.
Asked whether such exercises could act as preparation for an invasion of Taiwan, Tsang said they were too different, but added that “enhancing the capacity of the PLAN to operate long-distance will be beneficial in general terms to enhancing its capacity in a Taiwan Strait crisis in the future.”
The PLAN “need to train for long-distance deployments, particularly off Africa, where China is building up its interest,” he said. China has invested heavily in the continent through President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Infrastructure Initiative and is Africa’s biggest trade partner.
But there are more than economic reasons for China to join the exercises, according to Nantulya. They include having the ability to protect the many Chinese nationals working in Africa — the Chinese have been engaged in anti-piracy operations off Africa’s East coast for years — and maintain stability in countries that host Chinese peacekeepers or strategic investments.
Also, Nantulya said, it’s possible Beijing — which has only one military base in Africa, in Djibouti — is looking to establish additional bases on the continent in the next decade.

The U.S. has raised concerns about a possible Chinese base in Equatorial Guinea on the Atlantic coast.
“In terms of Russia, I think it’s quite obvious that what China has been doing is trying to provide Russia some form of platform to be able to continue conducting international relations despite the fact that it’s been heavily sanctioned,” Nantulya said. The war games that have been heavily criticized for taking place amid Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine.
The U.S. State Department has told VOA by email, “We note with concern South Africa’s plan to hold joint naval exercises with Russia and the PRC. … We encourage South Africa to cooperate militarily with fellow democracies that share our mutual commitment to human rights and the rule of law.”
According to Chinese state media, China has sent a destroyer, a frigate and a defense ship to the exercises in South Africa, which run until February 27.

Source: Voice of America

THE WHITE HOUSE — Jill Biden arrives in Namibia Wednesday for her first visit to Africa as U.S. first lady.
Biden will focus on women’s empowerment, children’s issues and food insecurity that has ravaged parts of the continent.

“Dr. Biden’s trip builds on last year’s U.S.- Africa Leaders summit and as another demonstration of President Biden’s commitment that the United States is all-in on Africa and all-in with Africa,” Judd Devermont, senior director for African Affairs at the National Security Council, told reporters Tuesday morning.
“The U.S. strategy toward sub-Saharan Africa, which we released last August, starts with the conviction that Africa is critical to advancing our shared global priorities,” Devermont added. “We believe that we are in the early years of a decisive decade which will determine the rules of the road on a host of vital issues from trade and economics, cybersecurity and technology.”
With this visit, Jill Biden also becomes the first U.S. first lady to visit Namibia since the southwest African nation gained independence in 1990.
In addition to focusing on women and children, the first lady will draw attention to the dire food insecurity that is again gnawing at East Africa as she visits Kenya.
“In Kenya, Dr. Biden will very specifically draw attention to the food security crisis impacting the Horn of Africa, which is noted as the worst drought that this region has experienced in decades,” said NSC spokesperson Becky Farmer. “Over 20 million people are increasingly experiencing acute food insecurity with many more at risk of increased hunger over the last year.”

President Biden highlighted the situation in December when he announced a large humanitarian aid package at a summit that brought African leaders to Washington. And he discussed it again Tuesday as he highlighted the effects of Russia’s war in Ukraine on global food supplies.
“Putin tried to starve the world, blocking the ports of the Black Sea to stop Ukraine from exporting its grain exacerbating a global food crisis that hit the developing nations of Africa especially hard. Instead, the United States and the G-7, and partners around the world answered the call with historic commitments to address the crisis and to bolster global food supplies. And this week my wife, Jill Biden, is traveling to Africa to help bring attention to this critical issue,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday.
The Biden administration has been seen as trying to woo Africa to support Ukraine over Russia, recently dispatching Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to Senegal, Zambia and South Africa.

Meanwhile, Russia’s foreign minister has visited multiple nations that have historic or ideological ties to Russia or the former Soviet Union, such as Mali, Sudan and Angola.

China sent its new foreign minister to Africa for his maiden voyage — a sign of that nation’s deep interest in the continent.

Warm receptions are the norm
Presidential-spouse visits often provide a contrast to the strategic, muscular approach of the presidency — partly because, as Biden herself points out, she has no executive authority and no mandate from American voters.
“I wasn’t elected — but I had a part to play,” she said in December, at a gathering of spouses of African leaders. “As spouses, we serve the people of our countries, too. Don’t we? We see their hearts and hopes. We witness the small miracles of compassion and generosity between neighbors. We know what can happen when communities come together — how much can change when we work towards a cause that’s bigger than ourselves.”
U.S. first ladies are generally well-received on the African continent, said Katherine Jellison, a professor of U.S. women’s history and gender history at Ohio University.
“There’s just going to be warmer feelings toward a nonpolitician who’s visiting than a politician, because there may be strings attached,” she said.
U.S. first lady Laura Bush was well received during her multiple visits to the continent, where she promoted the Bush administration’s HIV and malaria initiatives and attended the inauguration of the continent’s first female president, Liberia’s Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, in 2006.

And for first Black first lady, Michelle Obama, trips to the continent were fraught with deep significance. She also used her platform to push for girls’ education.
And then there was first lady Melania Trump, whose 2018 visit to Ghana, Malawi, Kenya and Egypt was overshadowed by one, highly examined fashion choice.
For a safari in Nairobi National Park, the former model donned headgear that, for many Africans, evoked the continent’s painful history.
“She wore a pith helmet and looked like she was out of some movie about colonial-era Africa and so that didn’t go over well,” Jellison said. “And instead, the visual images very much played up the idea of Western colonization of Africa — absolutely the opposite of Michelle Obama, the daughter of Africa returning.”
Jill Biden visited Africa five times as second lady, highlighting the plight of the powerless. In 2011, when visiting the continent’s largest refugee camp at Dadaab in Kenya, she made an earnest plea, one she is likely to repeat on this trip as the region again descends into crisis.
“Mothers are bringing their children from Somalia, walking sometimes 15, 20, 25 days and they lose their children along the way, the children die,” she said. “So what I’m asking is for Americans just to be, maybe reach out and help and because the situation here is dire.”

Source: Voice of America