As Africa braces itself for a surge of coronavirus infections, both China and the US are claiming to be Africa's greatest supporter, but there is more at stake in this escalating rivalry than simply tackling the virus, writes BBC Africa correspondent Andrew Harding.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was adamant that "no country will rival what the US is doing" in terms of supporting the fight against Covid-19 in Africa. And he went further to say that "no nation ever has, or ever will" do more to support global health.
Mr Pompeo was speaking on a conference call with a small group of African and Africa-based journalists. I was one of them.
At the time - last month - I put the bluster about "no nation ever doing more" down to the now-familiar rhetorical habits of the Trump administration, which was evidently trying to polish its internationalist credentials in the aftermath of its decision to turn its back on the World Health Organization (WHO) at the height of a global health crisis.
It seemed churlish to point out that the $170m (£134m) in new aid that Mr Pompeo was bragging about giving Africa was almost certainly matched - or exceeded - by the donation of just one Chinese billionaire - Jack Ma.
But a few days ago, I saw an article about Africa in a Chinese state-controlled media outlet, the Global Times, and was reminded of Mr Pompeo's remarks, and struck by the extent to which Africa has become a part - a small corner, perhaps - of Washington and Beijing's new cold war battlefield, and that - as in the previous, official Cold War - a sudden crisis, like Covid-19, is inevitably transformed into some sort of proxy conflict.
Push against multi-party democracy
The Global Times article boasted that China's "solid political system" had underpinned its own success in countering Covid-19.
And then it went further. Surely now was the time, it argued, for African nations to end their failed experiment with western multi-party democracy - an experiment that had led to inequality, ethnic and religious divisions, violence, and "the destruction of lives and properties."
Instead, Africa should follow China's one-party-state path.
Soon afterwards, I spotted another article in another state-controlled Chinese newspaper, China Daily, that praised the "domino effect" of Beijing's ambitious "Belt and Road Initiative" in Africa, a giant investment and infrastructure strategy that was accelerating the continent's recovery "from centuries of slavery, colonialism, neo-colonial domination, and now Covid-19".
Mr Pompeo's answer to that was brusque. China's Communist Party was imposing "an enormous amount of debt… on African countries… on incredibly onerous terms that will impact African people for an awful long time".
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