WASHINGTON — The U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will strive to strengthen and reinterpret U.S. partnerships in Africa during a weeklong trip that marks the Biden administration’s latest and most visible outreach as it moves to offset China’s growing influence.

Harris intends to travel to Ghana, Tanzania, and Zambia, focusing on economic development, climate change, food security, and a growing young population. She is set to arrive in Ghana’s capital, Accra, on Sunday. Doug Emhoff, her husband, is accompanying her.

“For far too long, the United States’ foreign policy establishment has treated Africa as an after-school project rather than part of the core curriculum,” said Michelle Gavin, an Africa expert at the Council on Foreign Relations and a former United States ambassador to Botswana. “I see a concerted effort now to change that mindset.” However, it takes time.”

Harris will be widely followed across Africa as the first person of color and the first woman to serve as America’s vice president. Harris was reared in California even though her mother was born in India and her father was born in Jamaica.

“Everyone is excited about Kamala Harris,” said Idayat Hassan, director of Abuja, Nigeria’s Centre for Democracy and Development. “You can be whatever you want — that’s what she represents to many of us.”

A lecture in Accra and a visit to Cape Coast Castle, where enslaved Africans were once put onto ships bound for America, will highlight Harris’ trip. Harris also intends to meet with authorities in each country she visits and to lay a wreath in memory of the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital.

Harris will be widely followed across Africa as the first person of color and the first woman to serve as America’s vice president.

Her schedule also includes a few non-traditional sites designed to emphasize the exciting future of a continent with a median age of only 19.

Harris intends to visit a recording studio in Accra, meet with female entrepreneurs, and visit a tech accelerator in Dar es Salaam. Harris is scheduled to meet with corporate and charity leaders in Lusaka, Zambia’s capital, to discuss boosting access to digital and financial systems.

Emhoff’s events have a similar focus. During his visit to Ghana, he intends to hold a town hall meeting with performers from a local television show, attend a girls’ basketball clinic, and tour a women-run chocolate company.

According to administration sources, the goal is to promote Africa as a site for investment rather than just aid packages, a subject that Harris underlined in December during a U.S.-Africa meeting in Washington.

“Because of your energy, ambition, and ability to turn seemingly intractable problems into opportunities,” she remarked, “I am an optimist about what lies ahead for Africa and, by extension, for the world.” “Simply put, your ability to see what could be, unburdened by what has been.”

Harris will spend three nights in Ghana, two nights in Tanzania, and one in Zambia before returning to Washington on April 2.

“It’s trip to support reformers,” said Vanda Felbab-Brown, co-director of the Brookings Institution’s Africa Security Initiative. “All three countries have faced significant challenges and changed dramatically.”

Tanzania’s first female president has loosened restrictions on opposition parties and rallies.

Ghana is facing a debt crisis and excessive inflation, dragging down an economy that was once among the best in the region. It is particularly concerned about instability caused by Islamist extremists and Russian mercenaries operating in countries north of Ghana.

Tanzania’s first female president has loosened restrictions on opposition parties and rallies. Zambia has implemented its reforms, such as decriminalizing presidential slander. However, democratic development in both areas is thought to be fragile.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, Secretary of State Antony Blinken, and First Lady Jill Biden have traveled to Africa. President Joe Biden is set to leave office later this year.

Harris will visit Zambia for the first time since childhood when her maternal grandpa worked there. He was a civil servant from India who assisted with refugee relocation after Zambia gained independence from Britain.

“Grandpa was one of my favorite people in the world and one of the earliest and most lasting influences in my life,” Harris writes in her book.

The December U.S.-Africa meeting was the first since President Obama hosted one in 2014. Although Washington’s approach to Africa has had some historic successes, such as President George W. Bush’s HIV/AIDS effort, which has saved millions of lives, there have also been times of neglect.

“There’s a lot of skepticism and doubt about American staying power,” said Daniel Russel, a former State Department official who now works at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “They’re used to American promises that fizzle out and don’t amount to much.”

In stark contrast, China has led far-reaching infrastructure projects and increased telecom activities throughout the region.

According to John Kirby, a White House national security spokesman, African leaders are “beginning to realize that China is not their friend.”

“China’s interests in the region are purely selfish, in contrast to the U.S.,” he remarked. “We are truly committed to assisting our African friends in dealing with many challenges.”

Senior administration officials have been careful not to characterize Harris’ visit as another step in a geopolitical contest, which might alienate African leaders weary of choosing sides between global heavyweights.

They are now waiting to see what Harris and the U.S. have to give over the next week.

“Because of her profile, she has a very good reputation in Africa,” said Rama Yade, senior director of the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. “However, beyond that, public opinion in the three countries will develop expectations very quickly.”

SOURCE – (AP)

CAIRO, Egypt – A popular gay social networking app told its Egyptian users on Friday that police are targeting LGBTQ+ people by pretending to be part of the community.

When Egyptian users open the app, they will display the following warning in Arabic and English:

“We have received information that Egyptian police are actively arresting gay, bi, and trans people on digital platforms.” They use fake accounts and have even taken over the accounts of real people in the community who had been arrested and had their phones taken away. Please use extreme vigilance both online and offline, including with accounts that were credible in the past.”

Although homosexuality is not officially illegal in Egypt, members of the LGBTQ+ community are routinely prosecuted for ‘debauchery’ or ‘violating public morality.’ It detained seven people in 2017 for waving a rainbow flag at a rock festival. Arrests of homosexuals and non-conforming individuals continue to be widespread.

An Egyptian government media officer did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Grindr’s new measure.

The warning comes after rights groups and the media reported that authorities in the region are aggressively using digital platforms to target the LGBTQ+ community.

Authorities in the region are aggressively using digital platforms to target the LGBTQ+ community.

Human Rights Watch published a report in February detailing dozens of examples of security forces extorting, harassing, publically exposing, and detaining LGBTQ+ people in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Iraq, and Tunisia based on their behavior on Facebook and Instagram, as well as the dating app Grindr. The journal also questioned big technology corporations for failing to invest adequately in Arabic language content filtering and protection.

“Grindr is working with groups on the ground in Egypt to ensure our users have up-to-date information on how to stay safe, and we are pushing international organizations and governments to demand justice and safety for the Egyptian LGBTQ community,” Grindr spokesperson Patrick Lenihan said in response to a comment request on Friday.

Grindr, a popular gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer dating app in California, has been chastised in the United States and penalized in Norway for sharing personal data with third parties that might identify users.

The company’s website’s privacy policy details how it uses and strives to protect user data. It says its goal is “to give you as much control over the Personal Information that you share within the Grindr Properties as possible.”

SOURCE – (AP)

Vermont’s St. Johnsbury — With the agreement on immigration announced on Friday by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and U.S. President Joe Biden, a process that has let tens of thousands of immigrants travel between the two countries on a backroad between New York state and Quebec will be stopped.

Since the beginning of 2017, there have been so many people crossing into Canada via Roxham Road near Champlain, New York, that the Royal Canadian Mounted Police has established a processing facility for them that is less than five miles (8 km) from the official border crossing where they would be sent back to the United States. Although Mounties had warned them that they would be detained, they were given permission to stay in Canada and pursue their cases, which can take years to resolve.

According to the new regulations, anyone seeking asylum who does not possess U.S. or Canadian citizenship and is apprehended within 14 days of crossing the border will be turned back. According to Canadian officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the agreement in advance, it was scheduled to go into effect a minute after midnight on Saturday. This speedy implementation was done to prevent a sudden influx of people trying to claim refugee status.

To make sure that travel between our two countries is fair and runs smoothly, Canada said it would expand the Safe Third Country Agreement so that it applies at authorized ports of entry and all along the land border, including on internal waterways.

The Western Hemisphere’s 15,000 migrants will be permitted to apply “on a humanitarian basis from Canada over the year, with a path to economic opportunities to address forced displacement, as an alternative to irregular migration,” according to the agreement.

About eight people in two families, one from Haiti and the other from Afghanistan, were among the last migrants to pass through, and they arrived at the American end of Roxham Road shortly after dawn on Friday. Both claimed to have traveled around to get there.

A loophole in a 2002 agreement between the United States and Canada.

The 28-year-old Gerson Solay carried Bianca to the border. He said he needed more papers to continue living in the U.S.

Before he was hauled into prison for processing, he said, “That is why Canada is my last destination.

The agreement occurs as the U.S. Border Patrol reacts to a sharp rise in unauthorized southbound crossings along the open Canadian border. Nearly all occur at the section of the border closest to Toronto and Montreal, Canada’s two largest cities, in northern New York and Vermont.

It’s unknown how Roxham Road became a popular route, but it can be reached in a short taxi ride from the point where Interstate 87 approaches the Canadian border, and for migrants traveling south, it’s a short trip to New York City.

Even though the number is still small compared to the U.S.-Mexico border, the Border Patrol has added more people to the area and started letting some migrants into Vermont with a date to meet with immigration officials.

Since early 2017, Canadian officials have needed help managing this. Many migrants traveling northward claimed they left because they believed President Donald Trump’s immigration policies would be unfriendly to their stay in the country. Since the Biden administration took office, the process has continued.

These immigrants have taken advantage of a loophole in a 2002 agreement between the United States and Canada, which states that asylum applicants must do so in the nation they first enter. Those who cross into Canada legally are sent back to the United States and instructed to apply there. However, persons who enter Canada outside of a port of entry can stay and ask for protection.

Southbound migrants are currently putting a burden on American border personnel.

U.S. Border Patrol authorities apprehended 628 illegal immigrants from Canada in February, which is more than five times as many as at the same time last year. Even though those figures pale compared to the number of migrants arriving from Mexico, where more than 220,000 were apprehended in just December, there has been a significant improvement in percentage terms.

Agents in the Swanton Sector of the Border Patrol, which includes parts of upstate New York, Vermont, and New Hampshire, stopped migrants 418 times in February, an increase of more than ten times over the same month last year. Mexican citizens, who can fly to Canada from Mexico without a visa, make up around half of those coming from Canada.

The police chief of St. Johnsbury, Vermont, which has a population of 6,000 and is about an hour south of the border, informed state authorities that the Border Patrol had unexpectedly dropped off a vanload of immigrants at the town’s welcome center. The same event has occurred multiple times in the previous few weeks.

The migrants who were let off in St. Johnsbury, according to a statement from U.S. Customs and Border Protection, had been detained along the border after entering the country illegally. They were given the notice to appear for further immigration proceedings.

Because St. Johnsbury has a bus terminal where migrants can board a bus to a bigger city, they were left there.

According to the statement, “in such cases, USBP collaborates with local communities to ensure the safety of all parties—both community members and migrants—as well as the stability in the community’s resources.”

They claimed to have been in Canada for two months but did not discuss what had led them to continue traveling.

But according to local officials, they needed to be given more time to plan. State officials are currently setting up a mechanism to offer any services that migrants might need.

A Haitian couple and their three children—two boys, ages 17 and 9, and a girl, 15—were dropped off at the welcome center on Thursday. The family, who wanted to remain anonymous, desired to board a bus for Miami.

They claimed to have been in Canada for two months but did not discuss what had led them to continue traveling.

They missed the bus on Thursday that would have let them connect to one in Boston from which they could board another bus to Miami. A group of neighborhood volunteers spent the day providing food, helping them locate lodging for the night, and setting up transportation for them to catch the bus on Friday.

St. Johnsbury wants to assist these migrants, but not immediately, according to police chief Tim Page.

To know what to do when these families arrive, he stated, “We need to write something down.” “This will all go a little smoother when we have a system set up,” someone said.

SOURCE – (AP)