By Hend Selim, Cairo / Egypt
With Donald Trump becoming President, it is wondered what kind of foreign policy the US will follow towards different regions.
The direction in which US policy towards African countries will develop with Trump is also one of the topics discussed under this heading.
We asked Africa expert Lawrence Freeman about the possible course of US-Africa relations during the Trump era.
How do you expect the future of the American investment in the Lobito Corridor – a rail line stretching through Angola, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Zambia?
The Lobito Corridor is the first infrastructure project that the United States has launched in Africa 60 years ago. Sincere collaboration of President John Kennedy, and Ghana’s first President Kwame Nkrumah in building the vital hydroelectric dam-industrial complex in the early 1960s. So, this is a significant effort by the United States. However, it’s a multi-billion-dollar investment that would require at least four to five billion dollars and it’s a long-term investment. It’s not clear to me if the investment in this infrastructure project will be completed because the United States is still relying on a majority of the funds coming from the private sector. Only a small amount of money (500 million dollars) has actually been put up so far by the United States-one-tenth of what is needed. Hence, this project will actually be completed.
Secondly, it’s mainly a project to extract critical raw materials from the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia, which is something that the Africans don’t want to do anymore; they want to use their raw materials to produce products to sell to the world. This appears to be oriented towards extractive raw materials. Thirdly, the project is designed openly by the administrations to counter China, which has a great deal of infrastructure particularly on the coast of the Indian Ocean. The United States is trying to counter China in Africa, that is not a positive motivation. Fourthly, the Trump’s administration is oriented towards transactional contracts, investments that make money for the private sector. Whether trump would continue this project will depend on whether he and his people believe it is a money maker. He does not really understand the importance of infrastructure in Africa or reducing poverty and hunger in Africa. He would strictly follow whether it is transactional, whether it would produce income for private sector companies in the United States. Those are all serious questions that we don’t know the answers at this moment.
During Trump previous administration, he said The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) would not be renewed when it expires in 2025. How do you expect the future of this act?
The AGOA, as it’s known, is very popular in the United States and it is always received bipartisan support from the Republican and Democratic parties. I would guess at this point that in most likelihood it would be continued. The unfortunate part about AGOA is that it’s being used as a political weapon. It was originally developed by the Clinton administration in 2000 to help African countries to export commodities without tariffs to the United States, but since then it’s been used as a political weapon. For example, Biden removed Ethiopia from AGOA because his administration was supporting the Tigray war against the Ethiopian government. Also, there are several Republicans, who have threatened to remove South Africa from AGOA due to its close working relationship with China. Therefore, it should be renewed but we must make sure that it doesn’t become a weapon against African countries because the United States disagrees with their policies.
How should that act not be used as a weapon against African countries?
There’s nothing Africans can do except to educate the government of the United States, both the executive branch and the Congress. But it really raises the larger question, which is that Africa, and the global South must move ahead and establish their own increasingly independent economic relations with each other that are based on economic development. We must establish a paradigm of economic development throughout the rest of the world that would circumvent the United States, which chooses to punish African countries as part of their stupid rules-based order attack on China.
US-China conflict in Africa?
Trump recognized that if the US was going to counter China’s growing economic influence in Africa, it needed to maintain some level of partnership. What steps can Trump take to reduce China’s influence in Africa?
Honestly, the United States cannot actually weaken Chinese influence in Africa. China in the recent period in this century since 2000 has advanced very strong political and economic relations with African nations. For example, Forum on China Africa Cooperation FOCAC which is the meeting that takes place between a China and African leaders every three years; they just finished their ninth meeting in September. FOCAC meetings include ministers, presidents and heads of states from African nations that take place in Africa or in Beijing. China has also established the Belt and Road Initiative that has brought billions of dollars of investment in needed infrastructure into Africa. China has been the only nation in the world that has actually made a commitment to helping African nations to reduce their poverty. The United States or the West do not have any way to reduce China’s influence in Africa.
Unfortunately, all the recent administrations of the United States have submitted themselves to the rules-based order ideology, which views the world as a chess board-organized around a zero seven game; if you have more than your opponent or you have less; you are the victor or the victim; you are the winner or you are the loser. This is the stupid and dangerous disease of geopolitics that the U.S. has been following. From their standpoint, they must counter China, because China must be stopped, must be suppressed, must be reduced in their influence. Therefore, investment in Africa to stop China, which is a bad reason, but it doesn’t matter because they can’t stop China, and this is a fool’s errand on the part of the government. I suspect that there will be those in the Trump administration who will try to orient Trump to carry out these policies in Africa against China, which may be helpful to Africa to get some more investment, but it will not stop China. China and Africa have a serious economic, political, and cultural bond that is not going to be disrupted.
Trump’s Africa policy
Will Trump reduce the American aid to Africa, especially given that his previous administration repeatedly made proposals to slash foreign aid worldwide?
Trump’s orientation is that the United States should concentrate on a building up the United States and he foolishly doesn’t understand that the United States will progress as the rest of the world develops and progress. His orientation is to pull back on foreign interventions and foreign aid, which we see in many comments. He will place less emphasis on “human rights” in Africa, and less emphasis on “good governance” in Africa and less support for “democracy movements” in Africa. I suspect he will also reduce the aid to Africa and the rest of the world. Senator Marco Rubio, who will be the Secretary of State will be involved in many of those decisions, and he may have a different orientation. I suspect that there will be a pullback across the board in many of the policies of aid from the United States government and State Department and USAID to the rest of the world.
How do you expect the future of PEPFAR, a long-running US initiative that has poured huge sums into fighting HIV in Africa?
PEPFAR was an initiative by George W Bush in his first administration, about 20 years ago and has proven itself very effective in reducing the spread of AIDS in Africa, which has the largest number of Citizens with AIDS. PEPFAR has been passed and supported by Democrats and Republicans in the government since it was initiated by a Republican George W Bush. It has broad bipartisan support and has been effective. I think it’s one of those legacy programs for Africa which has proven itself effective. I would suspect that it will be supported in the next administration. I can’t guarantee it but that’s my expectation at this point.
Can the USA and France or other western countries develop a common strategy towards Africa under the Trump administration?
The problem is that the United States has had no real positive policy towards Africa for many decades. As I said earlier, the last President John F. Kennedy, the president from1961 to 1963, was the only president who actually wanted to engage with African leaders to develop policies to help the people on the African continent. He formed a close working relationship with Ghana’s first President, Kwame Nkrumah and they built an energy- aluminum smelting plant in Ghana, which has a plaque recognizing Kennedy for that effort. There has been no such policy by any president since. While President Bill Clinton was responsible for AGOA but there has been no substantial infrastructure development. Africa will not develop without infrastructure, and this has been understood by China. The Chinese have understood, learning from their own experience that infrastructure builds economy and reduces poverty. So, I don’t think the United States has good policy; nothing done significantly under Obama’s administration, nothing done under Biden’s administration, and I don’t think anything’s going to be done by Trump as well. They just don’t really care about development. They don’t understand its importance. They don’t understand strategically how the United States benefits by economic development of Africa, which will have almost two and a half billion people by 2050. We must develop this continent. I mean they need energy; they need transportation, they need schools, and they need hospitals. This is essential because Africa is going to have one fourth of the world’s population and this could benefit the United States. In Trump’s terms, he will make money as Africa develops and grows but this concept is foreign to the entire Congress and all our leaders in both parties. Therefore, I don’t expect there is going to be any real significant positive change, which is very sad. It’s a failure of the leadership of the United States, a result of their commitment to the stupid rules-based order mentality.
Will the Russia-US conflict spill over into Africa?
Will Trump offer support to African countries in an attempt to push Russia out, facing that Moscow is providing troops and arms to some countries such as Mali, Niger and Burkina Faso?
I don’t think that’s at the top of the list for President Trump himself. I think the United States has lost a lot of its support in the Sahel as well as their friendship. The United States has been kicked out of Niger where we spent over 100 million dollars in building a military base. I don’t think that’s going to be reversed. I don’t think it’s in Trump’s mind that the Russia has to be pushed out. Some of his aids and cabinet picks may try to convince him of that. They falsely view their number one enemy is China. The Trump administration, the Biden administration and before them the Obama administration, all these leaders of governments in the United States, they all see China as the number one enemy. They insist that China must be suppressed, China must be put down, China must be removed as a leader in the world politics. So, Russia is secondary and maybe in Trump’s mind, tertiary or less, and I’m not sure there will be a big effort against Russia. I’m not sure there’s much they can do because these countries in the Sahel have now removed themselves from ECOWAS and they’ve removed themselves from military engagements with Europe and the United States. While Russia will try to benefit from this, but I’m not sure there’s much that United States can do to change that.
Will the United States’s policy towards Africa be changed under Trump’s administration?
I think there would be three changes. The first change: I think Trump will be less interventionist; he’s not looking to support or get involved in military confrontations; he can see that as waste of money. Therefore, I think we won’t see new big U.S military footprint in Africa.
The second change: Trump is not going to insist as the Democrats have that African nations must adopt U.S. democracy programs. He will pull back on those ideological obsessions that the Biden administration has had.
The third change: what we now know about his orientation, he’s looking to make money for American companies. So, that’s called in the United States, transactional.
He will make decisions based on whether there will be significant financial returns. He will look for areas where money can be made. He doesn’t understand the importance of development, he doesn’t understand that if you raise the standard of living of billions of African people, you raise the standard of living of the world and you increase productivity. Africa is going to become the center of world commerce in the next 20 years with over a billion people in its workforce. So, it’s very stupid of the Americans and I hope Trump is smarter than this, to not involve themselves in developing Africa because it means the United States economy will also improve by selling products to an expanding wealthy African population.