Africa is getting renewed attention from Washington — and some African states are courting African Americans

Even as South Africa investigates those claims, the Biden administration is trying to strengthen ties with the African Union, a continental member organization, and 49 of Africa’s 54 countries, including South Africa, on geopolitical and commercial issues.

The only African countries the U.S. is not courting are four that were suspended from the African Union, and Eritrea, a country with which the United States doesn’t have a formal relationship.

The U.S. is making this grand African play as it competes with China to influence the continent’s future. And while this particular U.S.-China contest is relatively new, U.S. involvement in Africa is not.

The way the U.S. has been involved on the continent, though, has changed over time, depending on the era, U.S. interests and a particular African nation’s needs. In 1822, for example, the U.S. began to send freeborn African Americans and emancipated former enslaved African Americans to Africa, where they settled the colony that would eventually become Liberia. That settlement was originally governed by white Americans.

After Liberia became a self-governing, Black republic in 1847, it relied heavily on U.S. financial assistance. By 1870, that assistance came by way of high-interest loans.

Decolonization and US interest in Africa

U.S. involvement with other African states took root after various countries, formerly governed by colonial powers, entered into self-rule. American policy objectives on the continent centered around U.S. strategic interests and came in the form of military and economic aid.

The U.S., for example, established diplomatic relationships with Egypt in 1922, Sudan in 1956 and Ghana in 1957, after those countries gained independence from the United Kingdom.

Beginning in the late 1950s, when other African countries gained independence, the U.S. formed diplomatic and commercial ties with them as well and worked to reduce the Soviet Union’s influence on the continent. In 1961 and 1962, the U.S. persuaded West African countries to deny the Soviet Union commercial flyover and landing rights in their territories.

After the the Cold War ended, the U.S. lacked clear policy objectives toward Africa, and interaction between the superpower and the continent waned.

Renewed US interest in Africa

In the 21st century, the U.S. began to turn its attention back to Africa as a way of pushing its strategic interests and strengthening commercial and diplomatic ties with African countries.

In 2000, during the Clinton administration, Congress enacted the African Growth and Opportunity Act to open American markets to eligible African countries.

Then, in 2003, President George W. Bush launched the global health initiative, the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, that has been the U.S.’s most significant action on the continent since its nearly 250-year enslavement of Africans – first as Colonial America, then the U.S. – from 1619 to 1865.

Known as PEPFAR, the initiative is credited with saving 21 million lives, mostly in Africa and the Caribbean.

More recently, the U.S. has held two U.S.-Africa Leaders Summits. President Barack Obama hosted the first one in 2014, and President Joe Biden held the second one in 2022. And, as part of the Biden administration’s Africa outreach, Vice President Kamala Harris visited Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia in March 2023 to discuss security and economic issues with leaders of those countries.