Following six months of policy whiplash on trade, tariffs, travel bans, aid, minerals and peacemaking, the message from US President Donald Trump to Africa seems clear, as he put it this week: “We’re shifting from aid to trade…In the long run this will be far more effective and sustainable and beneficial than anything else that we could be doing together.”
On Wednesday, the president hosted five West African leaders — from Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Liberia, Mauritania and Senegal — at the White House and said there was “tremendous wealth there and potential.” Just two weeks ago, an ebullient Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio oversaw the signing of a peace and minerals deal between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda And, the week before, Trump administration officials dominated discussions at the 2700-delegate 17th US.-Africa Business Summit in Luanda, Angola.
Yet, after all the glad-handing of the past month, there’s no avoiding the niggling features of this new “deal.” Words like “abusive” (with reference to Trump’s tariffs on African imports) keep being bandied about publicly and privately by the continent’s policymakers. In his interactions with African leaders, Trump displays ignorance of the continent (he told Italy’s prime minister a month ago that he doesn’t “know what the Congo is”) and comes across as condescending (he told the president of Liberia, a nation formed by freed American slaves in 1847 with English as the official language, that he speaks “such good English”). He has at times seemed to seek obeisance rather than to strike deals and influence those African leaders he meets. On Wednesday, the five leaders were made to do a whip-around of praises to Trump.
The impediments to a balanced and mutually beneficial relationship seem significant, and the three engagements of the past month exposed some of them. Tariffs, visa bans and lopsided peace-for-deals agreements have dominated the agenda and brought into stark relief the differences in style and content between America’s competitors, particularly China, and the Trump administration. America is already on the backfoot: An Afrobarometer survey in May showed that 60% of Africans believe China has a positive influence on the continent compared with 53% for the US.
The visa bans have caused outrage in Africa — and more is coming. As delegates arrived in Luanda on June 22 for the US-Africa summit, the Senegal women’s national basketball team had just canceled its training camp in the US after some team members’ visas were rejected thanks to the Trump travel restrictions. A week earlier, Trump had expanded his travel ban list to include 26 more African countries — 36 of Africa’s 54 nations may now be fully or partially banned.
“We cannot accept visa bans, we cannot accept unfortunate tariffs that have nothing to do with the rules and regulations of the WTO,” newly elected African Union Commission Chairman Mahamoud Ali Youssouf told the summit.
As Trump lapped up accolades from the five African leaders this week (“I didn’t know I’d be treated this nicely. This is great,” he said), the State Department announced it would now only issue single-entry three-month visas for Nigerians in non-immigrant and non-diplomatic categories, rolling back five-year multiple-entry visas. Nigeria is one of Africa’s top three economies. How are deals to be made when African businesspeople’s entry to the US will be so seriously restricted?
The consequences of Trump’s tariffs are already cascading through the continent and are causing deprivation, resentment and panic. The poor mountain kingdom of Lesotho — slapped with a 50% rate — declared a state of emergency to override its own laws to pursue job creation programs. With 38% unemployment, Lesotho says 40,000 jobs could be lost as garment factories close.
These missteps are invariably compared with China’s conduct in Africa. In areas where the America has behaved punitively, China has offered what seems on the surface to be opportunity and respect. In mid-June, China’s President Xi Jinping announced that all 53 African nations that have diplomatic ties with China will be accorded “zero-tariff treatment for 100% tariff lines.”
The Trump administration is already losing African leaders’ favor. Following Trump’s infamous Oval Office ambush of South Africa’s President Ramaphosa with false claims of a “white genocide,” Ghana’s President John Mahama garnered plaudits when he wrote that Trump’s actions were “an insult to all Africans.”
The impact of Trump’s chaotic aid cuts will become clearer over time — and will add to the sour note in the US-Africa relationship. The journal Nature reports that modeling of the aid cuts on programs for tuberculosis, HIV, family planning and maternal and child health suggests that roughly 25 million people could die in the next 15 years without that annual spending.
Two to four million additional Africans are likely to die annually as a result of the aid cuts, says the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The administration’s “trade not aid” efforts come as America’s trade activity in Africa wanes. China became the continent’s largest trading partner in 2009. In 2023, 52 out of the 54 African countries (97%) trade more with China than with the US.
China-Africa trade climbed to $295 billion in 2024 compared with US trade of just $71.6 billion. America is thus playing catch-up in Africa.
Is the new Trump doctrine the right way? Some say so. Rwanda’s President Paul Kagame said in February that he “completely agrees with President Donald J. Trump on many things” after the US froze aid.
This is just the beginning of the implementation of Trump policy in Africa. It’s off to a bumpy start and there are numerous red lights. Trump is correct that no part of the world, particularly one as rich as Africa, should be dependent on aid for as long as the continent has been. Deals should be done, as Trump says, but how they are done, how inclusive they are of the countries and communities they impact, and how long they last, is as important as pulling them off in the first place.
Trump will be no friend of the continent if he, like the colonizers of the past, loots, stuffs his plane with riches and leaves.
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