Afrika en de USA

The Democrats made some gestures of concern for Sudan—belatedly appointing a special envoy in February 2024 and funding a slow drip of humanitarian aid. But the country was merely an appendage to broader foreign policy goals: the United Arab Emirates (UAE), a US ally, supports one of the principal belligerents in Sudan, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF). The UAE, one veteran security official explained to me, is a central pillar of America’s overall plan for the Middle East and the Gulf. The Democrats and Republicans alike want to erect a trade and security edifice upheld by the UAE, Israel, and Saudi Arabia, to resist Iran. During Trump’s last presidency, he pushed the Emirates to sign the Abraham Accords, normalizing relations with Israel. (Trump sweetened the deal by promising to sell the UAE F-35 fighter jets). In October 2023 the US used the Al Dhafra Airbase, which hosts the Air Force’s 380th Air Expeditionary Wing, to launch strikes on Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard in Syria. Seen from this perspective, Sudan is peripheral. The RSF might be massacring thousands, but that doesn’t matter geopolitically.

Biden’s indifference to Sudan was generally true for the continent writ large: he hasn’t made a single presidential visit to Africa. In one sense this is perplexing. During the Biden presidency, his National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, wrote an article in Foreign Affairs arguing that the US was taking the lead in global development and humanitarian assistance. This should have made Africa a prime target for engagement. By 2100 the continent will likely account for 35–40 percent of the world’s population. Since 2014 global GDP per capita has risen 15 percent, but in Africa it has fallen 10 percent. In 2022 two-thirds of the people facing acute food insecurity across the globe lived in Sub-Saharan Africa. In much of the Sahel, the state is a shell, with little administrative capacity. In the Horn of Africa, Ethiopia and Somalia, as well as the Sudans, are witnessing brutal conflicts. In theory, the US is well positioned to help address these challenges. It has a string of military bases across the continent—a legacy of two decades of counterterrorism operations—and controls the global reserve currency. Yet from dozens of meetings with Biden administration officials, I got the impression that they were curiously rudderless, devoid of any sense of how to deal with the continent’s challenges.

What explains the lack of focus? The Biden administration addressed African political issues not on their own terms, but as ancillary to great power competition: the continent only mattered relative to China and Russia. As part of its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China built infrastructural projects across much of Africa. Russia’s Wagner group—now folded into its Africa Corps—installed itself in the Central African Republic and the Sahel, fighting rebel groups and running gold mines. Biden made a halfhearted attempt to counter these developments. His administration raised over $4 billion for the Lobito Corridor, a railway project designed to connect the eponymous Angolan port with Kolwezi, a city in the Democratic Republic of Congo, which has one of the largest mineral deposits in the world. It is intended to head off Chinese influence in Angola, a major oil producer. Yet the BRI—albeit reduced in recent years—is conceived on a grander scale. China does quadruple the volume of trade with Africa that the US does. America has also lost ground to Russia. Until 2023 the US was fighting jihadist rebels across the Sahel. That July, Niger’s presidential guard ousted President Mohamed Bazoum in a coup. The new military junta drew closer to Russia and demanded that American forces withdraw. In May 2024 Russian military personnel took over the airbase that once housed US soldiers.

Biden was following Trump’s lead in this curious combination of functionalism and disinterest. It was Trump’s first administration, after all, that had foregrounded great power competition in ways that echoed the Cold War. To the extent that Trump thought about what he called the “shithole countries” of Africa, it was only in the context of broader geopolitical concerns. In 2019 in Sudan a revolution brought down the country’s longstanding dictator, Omar al-Bashir; Trump prevaricated on supporting a joint civilian-military government until it agreed to normalize relations with Israel, fatally wounding the transitional process.

The next Trump administration is likely to remain indifferent to Africa. No one will benefit more from that indifference than the UAE, which is now the face of neocolonialism on the continent. It has been backing military forces in Libya and Sudan, buying up vast tracts of agricultural land in Tanzania, Kenya, and elsewhere (displacing local communities in the process), and establishing ports along the Red Sea. Its allies in the Trump administration will likely give it a free pass to pursue these objectives. The UAE and Qatar have invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Jared Kushner’s private equity firm. (Kushner has pledged not to be involved in the next Trump administration, but he will surely wield influence.) Another crucial figure is Erik Prince, who is rumored to be close to Trump’s security team: the former head of Blackwater lives in Abu Dhabi and has based some of his companies there. He has the ear of President Mohammed bin Zayed, has trained Somali forces with UAE funding, and reportedly attempted to sell weapons to a UAE-backed Libyan warlord, Khalifa Haftar.

Trump might make one “proactive” policy decision as well: gutting USAID, the agency responsible for distributing America’s humanitarian aid budget. The US remains the principal funder of humanitarian activities across Africa. During his first term, Trump proposed pivoting from aid to loans, which is more in keeping with his transactional style of politics. The Heritage Foundation, in Project 2025, recommends further budget cuts, as well as entirely axing programs related to birth control, gender equality, and climate change.

This couldn’t happen at a more inopportune moment. Sudan is facing the worst famine the world has seen since the 1980s; its humanitarian appeal for 2024 is only 32 percent funded. Other countries in the Sahel and the Horn of Africa receive even less funding. Worse is to come. Sub-Saharan Africa is entering a debt crisis, as both China and private investors (including major US firms) call in external loans. Ghana, Nigeria, Kenya, and Ethiopia are severely affected—and these are the continental success stories.

Rather than think of Trump’s Africa policy, it is apposite to understand that there is no policy. The developmental dreams of the 1960s and 1970s seem very far away. We live in a political environment much closer to the nineteenth century: Africa is once again relegated to producing raw materials and being the site for Great Power competition. The consequences of this shift are unlikely to be contained on the continent. South Sudan has suffered extreme flooding, brought on by climate change; more than a million people were affected by flooding this year alone. Without intensive investment and development support, millions will soon flee from unlivable circumstances.

Trump will turn his back on the crisis. His administration plans to halt the US refugee program and extend a travel ban to Sudan and Somalia. The broad contours of these policies have been in place for over a decade: block African migration to the US and treat the continent as a security threat. In this, Biden’s and Trump’s administrations stand united.