Many misappropriate the phrase "all politics is local" in our ever-globalizing society. They prioritize the significance of what happens on the home front above the events unfolding on the world stage and, for a variety of reasons, cannot be blamed for it.

But when it pertains to our nations' leaders, it becomes a different story. Today this is applicable more than any country to the United States, whose foreign policy stewards acknowledge China's increasingly important role in the economic development and political affairs of Africa but continue to disregard it. Opportunities for mutual benefit in the African continent are being squandered in the West and bearing fruit in the East.

When US President Barack Obama begins his trip to Africa later this month, one of the few undertaken during his two-term presidency which has called for dynamic "resets" and "pivots" elsewhere, the US will be under scrutiny for exhibiting complacency in the face of African pragmatism.