Write Off an Entire Continent

Trump Looks Willing to Write Off an Entire Continent

Administration officials say African countries can’t just invoke “China” and get aid.

By Nahal Toosi

Many presidents have promised to fundamentally change the U.S. relationship with Africa, focusing more on trade and less on aid.

President Donald Trump might actually make that shift happen.

At first glance, Trump’s recent moves look like a sudden — and very messy — breakup with a whole continent. From dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development to considering banning visitors from many African countries, the U.S. appears to be abandoning these nations to deal on their own with challenges ranging from battling AIDS to weak education systems. The U.S. is also expected to close several embassies in Africa, and some reports suggest that Trump wants to scale back America’s military operations on the continent.

While the Trump administration is retrenching globally and imposing tariffs all over, no region appears to matter less to the White House than Africa.

People in Trump’s orbit, and even some African politicians, argue that the moves will benefit both the United States and the continent of 54 countries in the long run. The goal, they say, is to push African governments to invest more of their own money in public services and to take steps to turbo-charge their private sectors — possibly even making them more receptive to citizens’ needs.

That’s a risky bet, considering that some argue U.S. aid is helping forestall larger conflicts on the continent, preventing global health crises and providing a counterweight to Chinese influence in the region. But those are risks the Trump administration appears comfortable taking.

If an African government wants strong relations with Washington, including future development assistance, it must pay up in other ways — ranging from giving access to minerals to accepting deportees, Trump backers told me.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to travel to Africa this month, with Kenya and Ethiopia as likely stops. U.S. diplomats on the continent have already been instructed “to dedicate greater efforts toward supporting the U.S. private sector in identifying and closing business deals,” the State Department’s top Africa official, Troy Fitrell, told me in an email. “This will also benefit African nations as we engage as sovereign partners and equals, led by each of our respective national interests.”

For now, the Trump team is shrugging at previous arguments for maintaining aid, such as humanitarian responsibilities or the threat of a Chinese imprint. And although the U.S. still plans to offer countries emergency humanitarian aid for natural disasters or other immediate crises, it will insist on firm and quick end dates.

“This is an investment. This is not like we’re going to keep paying for 40 years for you to have your health care,” one Trump administration official involved with foreign aid discussions said of African governments.

I granted this person and several of the seven other current and former U.S. and African officials interviewed for this column anonymity because the diplomatic issues they discussed are sensitive both in Washington and inside foreign governments.

Trump and his team are fast-tracking efforts to achieve a goal that other U.S. presidents, including his four immediate Democratic and Republican predecessors, articulated to varying degrees — to shift the nature of the U.S. relationship with Africa. Each saw some progress, but none was willing to slash aid so deeply and suddenly.

The overwhelming sense among African officials is that they need to pony up what they can to effectively buy Trump’s love — the transactionalism for which he’s well known.

The Democratic Republic of Congo is offering access to critical minerals in exchange for U.S. help battling rebel forces; Massad Boulos, the father-in-law of Trump’s daughter Tiffany, was named recently to a role looking into such potential deals in the DRC and other African countries. And Somalia has offered the U.S. operational control over certain ports.

Angola will likely keep U.S. backing for the Lobito Corridor, a rail project that can help the U.S. access minerals. Togo, which is touting its track record in quietly mediating some African conflicts, could also see continued U.S. support, according to a former U.S. official familiar with African diplomatic circles. (A Togo official did not respond to questions about the mediation pitch.)

Some African nations will have an easier time staying on the U.S. radar simply because of their political sway on the continent (hey there, Kenya and Ethiopia), importance to energy markets (Nigeria) or other one-off reasons. Some are more financially and politically able to absorb the shock of losing U.S. aid than others. But some will have little to offer for Washington’s benefit, and they may choose to side with U.S. adversaries on the global stage — whether at the United Nations or in a war.

At least one, South Africa, is likely to be in the cold for a long time under Trump. The president’s team is infuriated by South Africa’s foreign policy choices, especially its diplomatic attacks on Israel, and accuses South Africa’s government of persecuting white Afrikaners. Trump has recently kicked out South Africa’s ambassador in Washington and set up a refugee program for white Afrikaners. South African officials insist Trump is misrepresenting them, especially on the Afrikaner issue.

It doesn’t help that the African diplomatic corps in Washington is weak, with poorly funded sub-Saharan African embassies in particular having little visibility. One African diplomat told me lobbyists are reaching out to the embassies offering their services as interlocutors with the Trump team, but many diplomatic posts lack the funds to hire such guns. Some expect their diplomatic budgets to shrink as their governments try to plug holes left by the shuttered U.S. aid programs.

Besides, the Trump team has yet to fill several high-level Africa-related roles, so African diplomats aren’t sure who to turn to. “It’s chaotic,” a second such diplomat told me.

One way in which African countries have traditionally tried to wield more global sway is through collective action via the African Union. But African diplomats tell me it seems pointless to deal with the Trump administration through the AU, because Trump and his aides generally dismiss multilateral bodies and prefer bilateral deals. In addition, most multilateral African institutions aren’t unified on how to deal with Trump.

Many Democratic lawmakers support moving the relationship with Africa away from aid, but they argue the Trump administration should have worked with Congress to introduce a new model. (Democrats also say Trump broke the law by dismantling USAID without consulting Congress.)

Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.) noted that Congress had, on a bipartisan basis and under the first Trump administration, created the International Development Finance Corporation. That agency espouses the private-sector ideal the Trump team is pushing.

Like many others, Coons warned that China would benefit from Trump’s seeming retrenchment.

“We’ve just handed them the best possible opportunity to expand their economic partnerships with the fastest growing continent on Earth, where there are more young workers, more economic natural resources and more opportunity for them now than anywhere else,” Coons said.

But Trump administration officials scoff at the idea that Congress would have helped them quickly reform America’s foreign aid infrastructure and its relationship with Africa. U.S. lawmakers are too beholden to too many interests to make grand moves, they say. For example, some U.S. lawmakers are likely to insist on accountability measures related to human rights and democracy, neither of which is a priority for Trump.

“The reason that no one ever did it is because it’s just too hard to get stuff like this done with Congress the totally proper way,” the Trump administration official said. “We actually did do it.”

The Trump team’s strategy is still in flux, so caveats and carve-outs will apply. Even now, despite canceling more than 80 percent of its programs worldwide, the State Department and what’s left of USAID — which Trump intends to absorb into State — are continuing some aid programs in certain African countries. It’s also hard to predict how much interest the U.S. will have on the security side, especially if terrorist groups on African soil more directly threaten the U.S. homeland.

I got the sense, to my surprise, that the Trump team isn’t too worried about China. The Chinese economy is struggling, and China’s approach to foreign aid is far less generous than America’s, including relying more on loans. Plus, some on Trump’s team suspect the China threat has been overhyped by an aid establishment that took too much of the money meant for needy people overseas.

“That’s a fucking myth that they tell you to sell the fucking aid,” the Trump administration official said.

Africans are already dying because of the U.S. aid cuts, and there’s been an outcry, mainly among Democrats, over the scaling down of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief — aka PEPFAR, the George W. Bush-era health initiative that has funded HIV/AIDS treatments on the African continent.

Still, people in Trump’s orbit are not moved by such anecdotes or data, seeing them as parts of tired arguments that have prevented a needed, radical change in U.S. ties with Africa. One person pointed out that the “E” in PEPFAR stands for “emergency.” Yet the program is now more than two decades old.

What about the tariffs? When I pointed out that they could damage African firms’ ability to do business with the U.S., I was told there would likely be future deals to ease the pain.

“I’m hoping that that’s kind of a short-term turbulence that’s going to be worked out,” said Tibor Nagy, a former assistant secretary of State for Africa in the first Trump term, who until recently served in another top State role for Trump on an acting basis.

When it comes to Africa, the paradigm has shifted under Trump, whether or not people are ready.

“It’s going to be a fundamental change,” Nagy said. “And the African countries are going to figure out that the new relationship is much healthier for their societies. Maybe not for the elites, but definitely for their societies and for the young people that are desperate for jobs. That’s what our whole policy should be geared towards.”