House Tours
Yellen tours nature reserve to begin visit to South Africa
HAMMANSKRAAL, South Africa (AP) — U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen used a tour of a wildlife park in South Africa on Wednesday to announce a joint initiative to curb wildlife trafficking and related criminal activity in both countries. to fight.
Yellen said during a visit to the Dinokeng Game Reserve that the United States and South Africa would form a task force to focus on financing the wildlife trade. She said there would also be more information sharing between US and South African financial intelligence units.
The task force would “follow the money” in the same way other investigative authorities pursue evidence of serious crimes, Yellen said, and the “shared commitment” would likely help US efforts to fight high-level money laundering and corruption.
“Wildlife traffickers, corrupt officials and other criminals rely on many of the same vulnerabilities in money laundering regulatory regimes, so our efforts to combat wildlife trafficking reinforce our efforts to combat corruption and vice versa,” said Yellen in the game reserve in the north of Pretoria, the capital of South Africa.
Yellen is on a 10-day tour of Africa, part of the Biden administration’s effort to get more in touch with the world’s second-largest continent. She has already visited Senegal and Zambia, where she outlined the potential that Africa, with its young population and growing middle class, has for American business.
She began her visit to South Africa on Wednesday, two days after Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov held talks with his South African counterpart in Pretoria, underlining the complicated relations some African countries have with the West on the one side and Russia and China on the other. .
Yellen will meet with President Cyril Ramaphosa and the country’s finance minister on Thursday and will also visit a Ford assembly plant and a coal mining region. Yellen is expected to speak on the expansion of trade and investment flows between the US and Africa during her visit to South Africa.
South Africa is the continent’s most developed economy and is seen as key to the Biden administration’s efforts to strengthen the US diplomatic and economic presence in Africa. But the country is also a historical ally of Russia because of the Soviet Union’s support in ending South Africa’s apartheid system of racial oppression of the black majority.
South Africa is the foremost of several African countries taking a neutral stance on the war in Ukraine and refusing to side with the US and its allies in condemning Russia, a move that perhaps reinforced the need for the Biden administration to restore relations. in Africa.
President Joe Biden has said he plans to visit Africa this year, as do Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Jill Biden and other cabinet secretaries. U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield was also set to embark on a three-country tour of Africa on Wednesday.
Yellen’s announcement of a joint wildlife trade task force in a reserve home to lions, leopards, elephants and critically endangered black rhinos could help a key South African industry. South Africa has an abundance of game parks and a thriving wildlife tourism industry, but struggles with the effects of poaching and the illegal animal trade.
The White House Strategy for Africa also expresses concern about China’s involvement in sub-Saharan Africa, where it has for years entrenched itself in the region’s natural resources market. China is now South Africa’s largest trading partner.
