WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama said Wednesday the United States wants to help Africa fight extremist unrest and international terrorism, as a high-level summit turned to security challenges on the continent.

A day after announcing $33 billion in investment and finance for the continent, Obama told 45 African heads of state and government at the Washington talks that they need more than foreign business.

“The new trade deals and investments I announced yesterday are an important step. And today we can focus on what we can do, as governments, to accelerate that investment,” he said.

“We have the opportunity to deepen our security cooperation against common threats,” he promised, as the summit with 50 African national delegations entered its third and final day.

“We can focus on how we can continue to strengthen Africa’s capacity to meet transitional threats — transnational threats and, in doing so, make all of our nations more secure.”

Obama also said African governments, despite receiving a flood of investment and trade from around the world, should strengthen the rule of law and respect civil rights to underpin economic progress.

In his opening remarks, Obama was not specific about the security threats he perceives in Africa.

But Mauritanian President Mohamed Ould Abdel Aziz, chairman of the African Union, recited a litany of problems, including terrorism, drug and human smuggling, disease and armed insurrection.

“We are facing major challenges,” he said, and urged Washington to get more involved in African peacekeeping in the way armies from the continent’s former European colonial rulers have.

European troops, principally the French, are deeply involved in the fight against the militant groups in the Sahel region and have deployed as peacekeepers in the Central African Republic.

US special forces deployed in small numbers in the Great Lakes region to help Uganda hunt for the rebel army led by Joseph Kony.