Secretary of State Antony Blinken Arrives in Kenya to Begin Africa Visit: Live

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Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken is visiting Kenya, starting a swing through Africa amid political upheaval and questions about the Biden administration’s approach to the continent.

Mr. Blinken arrived in Nairobi overnight Wednesday, making him the highest-ranking Biden administration official to visit sub-Saharan Africa. He will try to advance diplomacy to pull Kenya’s neighbor, Ethiopia, back from the brink of what experts say could be an expansion of the devastating civil war that has been raging in the north of the country, with the potential for genocide.

On a stop in Nigeria this week, Mr. Blinken will outline a vision for U.S. policy toward Africa, one that is expected to focus on the value of democracy to the continent’s future.

Some critics say the Biden administration has been inattentive to Africa, a common complaint about U.S. foreign policy but one that has gained more currency as China, America’s top strategic competitor, plants deeper political and economic roots on the continent and anti-American jihadist groups continue to thrive there.

American officials are concerned about democratic backsliding across the continent, which has seen a wave of military coups in recent months — including in Sudan, where a coup last month quashed a democratic transition that followed the 2019 ouster of the country’s longtime autocratic ruler, Omar Hassan al-Bashir. Experts say the four successful military coups in Africa this year — including in Guinea, Chad and Mali — are the highest number in more than 40 years.

Nigeria’s democracy is also troubled: As a candidate, Mr. Biden condemned the country’s government for endemic corruption, and for violently cracking down on demonstrators seeking more freedom for civil society.

Kenya has played a key role in diplomatic efforts to peacefully resolve a conflict between the Ethiopia’s central government and rebels in its northern Tigray region.

“This is Rwanda-esque,” added Patricia Haslach, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Ethiopia from 2013 to 2016. Ms. Haslach stopped short of saying that a genocide might be occurring, but other experts have called that a realistic possibility in a conflict increasingly defined by ethnic identity.

The Clinton administration’s failure to intervene and potentially prevent the massacre of as many as 800,000 ethnic Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 has haunted former U.S. officials for decades.

Mr. Blinken plans to conclude his trip with a visit to the Senegalese capital, Dakar.

Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken opened his visit to Kenya by meeting on Wednesday with civil society leaders in Nairobi, the capital, encouraging them to keep up the fight to defend democracy.

“Not just in Kenya, but around the world, you’ve seen over the last decade or so what some have called a democratic recession,” Mr. Blinken said….