Jill Biden and her granddaughter Naomi, are wheels up for a six-day trip to Namibia and Kenya starting Tuesday, beating out the nation’s first black vice president and even the president himself as the first White House official to visit Africa during this administration.
The first lady is seen as a reliable messenger, a person who rarely makes a misstep or strays from the administration’s missives.
‘She’s seen as the safer bet,’ said Professor Katherine Jellison of Ohio University, who is an expert on first ladies.
Her presence comes at a time the Biden administration is pushing to deepen U.S. economic ties with Africa and provide a counterweight to China and Russia, which have invested heavily in the continent.
But Biden also has personal reasons for wanting to make the trip as she has deep ties to the continent. Although her sixth trip to Africa, it’s her first visit to Namibia and third trip to Kenya according to the East Wing.
Jill Biden will make a six-day trip to Namibia and Kenya; becoming the first White House official to visit Africa
During her five days on the ground, Biden will focus on food insecurity, an issue that affects about six million Kenyans due to drought conditions in the arid nation.
The first lady ‘has had very memorable experiences and established very genuine connections in her previous trips, which were in 2010 and 2011,’ a senior administration official said on Tuesday morning.
‘Based on her previous experiences, she has a particular very keen appreciation for the challenges of regional food security, and was really motivated to use her return her third visit to Kenya as a way to draw attention to what is a dire and immediate food crisis that cannot wait for further intervention and mobilization from the international community.’
According to the UN World Food Program, about one-third of Kenyans live in poverty and 29% of children in rural areas have been affected by food insecurity.
Jill Biden visited Kenya in 2011 – when she was second lady – amid the worst drought in East Africa in 60 years. During that trip, she also met with Somali refugees and held meetings on how the U.S. could help with the ongoing food and refugee crisis.
She later wrote of visiting the Kibera community in Nairobi: ‘The quality of life is nearly unimaginable — there is no electricity in the homes, and little access to running water. But it’s where I met some of the bravest women and girls that I will never forget, who are fighting to change the circumstances for their community.’
Kenya has been plagued by a dry rainy season.
And the Biden administration claims the Russian invasion of the Ukraine has compounded the problem, cutting off a major food supply line to Africa.
President Joe Biden, speaking in Poland on Tuesday, noted criticized Russia for exacerbating the global food crisis.
‘Putin tried to starve the world, blocking the ports in the Black Sea to try and stop Ukraine for exporting its grain, exacerbating the global food crisis that hit developing nations in Africa especially hard,’ he said. ‘This week, my wife Jill Biden is traveling to Africa to help bring attention to this critical issue.’
Additionally, the first lady will focus on the empowerment of women – including issues relating to gender-based violence – and youth and promoting the administration’s pro-democracy message.
Namibia, for example, is a young but stable democracy on the continent. It will be Biden’s first visit to that nation. And Kenya has a history of political violence with hotly-contested elections driven by ethnic divisions and allegations of fraud.
The first lady’s trip also comes after President Biden made a successful secret trip to Ukraine to double down on the U.S. commitment to the embattled nation.
She will have a similar message, a virtual presence to give the message that America is here and ready to partner with African nations on their needs.
Jill Biden and President Joe Biden at the US-Africa Leaders Summit, in the State Dining Room of the White House in December
Jill Biden in Kenya in August 2011 – she has made two previous trips to that country
President Biden has pledged that senior members of his administration – including Vice President Kamala Harris (above) and himself – will visit Africa
It comes after the U.S. hosted the Africa Leaders Summit in December, where the president pledged to send several members of the administration – including the vice president – to Africa in addition to making a visit himself. He would be the first sitting U.S. president to visit sub-Saharan Africa in a decade and is expected to go later this year.
Jill Biden hosted a two-days spouses’ program during that summit, where she got to spend time with Namibian first lady Monica Geingos and Kenyan first lady Rachel Ruto.
She will show her own relationships with her counterparts and deepening existing-U.S. ties with Africa.
But the trip also been assigned to an official who can be counted on to carry out the administration’s message without bungling it.
Jill Biden rarely makes a misstep, unlike Kamala Harris, who bungled her message on immigration when she laughed during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt. Even President Biden has had his mistakes, such as when aides had to walk back his ad-libbed line during a speech in Poland, where he appeared to call on Vladimir Putin to be removed as president of Russia.
And it highlights her role as Joe Biden’s closest adviser and is extremely protective of the president.
‘What you get with our First Lady is they come back and they have the president’s ear directly, said Princeton Professor Lauren Wright, an expert on first ladies.
‘It’s much better and more effective than sending a Secretary of State or a vice president or someone else that just can’t communicate the severity of the situation on the ground with the immediateness that first ladies can,’ she added. ‘So, any message of urgency will get across without a filter, and that’s very rare in the executive branch.’
It’s a role Jill Biden has played before. This is her fourth solo international trip as first lady. She represented the United States at the Olympics in Tokyo, visited the Ukraine in May, and went to Latin America last summer.
‘This shows the great faith Joe Biden has in Jill Biden at a time when shoring up our relationships with African nations is very importance,’ Professor Jellison said.
Africa is home to some of the world’s fastest growing economies. President Biden has called for the United Nation’s Security Council to include permanent representation for Africa, and he’s called for the African Union to become a permanent member of the G20.
Jill Biden walks behind a greenhouse net during a tour of the facility at the Kenya Agricultural Research Institute in Nairobi in August 2011
Then Vice President Joe Biden and Second Lady Jill Biden visit the employees and survivors of former US embassy in Kenya during a 1998 trip
The first lady is the third administration official to visit Africa, after Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield.
Security will be tight on the trip, especially in Kenya, which has seen violence around its elections. The country also has seen its rate of violence against women increase since the COVID pandemic.
Nearly half of women in the region experience gender-based violence over the course of their lifetimes, and a third of Kenyan girls experience some form of sexual violence before turning 18, according to the Gender Violence Recovery Centre at the Nairobi Women’s Hospital.
But Jill Biden has shown she’s not afraid to go places where her husband and his administration are unpopular, such as her visits to red states during the COVID pandemic to urge people to get vaccinated.
‘First ladies have more of an ability to reach out to different audiences or hostile audiences than presidents do, but also, it might be what we ended up seeing as part of her legacy,’ Wright noted.
