In terms of foreign and security policy, the pivot to Asia will define the tenure of the next US administration. However, strategic competition at the global level between the US, China and, to a lesser extent, Russia will not leave the Africa policy of either the Democratic or the Republican side untouched. This post will look at the future Africa policies of the two parties and how they may affect partnerships on the continent as well as multilateral approaches more broadly.
After Asia, Africa is the second fastest growing economic region in the world. Yet it is also not well integrated into world trade, even though major trade routes pass along Africa’s coasts. After a period of democratization in the 1990s, some countries are now experiencing authoritarian backsliding with coups in Mali and Niger among others. In 2023, 38 multilateral peace operations were engaged on the continent. In these contexts, for decades, US Africa policy was based on promoting democratization, military cooperation, multilateral engagements, and substantially funding regional support programs to build infrastructures in the health sector. The previous Trump administration severely eroded the credibility and underlying legitimizing discourses of US foreign strategic assistance programs. The Biden-Harris administration sought to return to basic principles of US Africa policy, both programmatically and rhetorically. By reorganizing USAID and appointing former high-ranking UN Ambassador Samantha Power to coordinate the agency, the Biden-Harris administration upgraded USAID as a tool for promoting global order and demonstrating American reliability.
Continuing as Before? What Kamala Harris Can Build on
After years without a US Africa strategy, the Biden-Harris administration introduced the US Strategy toward Sub-Saharan Africa in 2022, which US embassies in Africa had long awaited to guide discussions with local partners. The strategy provides African counterparts with clarity on sticking to the above-mentioned traditional US objectives and emphasizes strategic competition with China and Russia. It further promotes climate-friendly energy transitions and climate change adaption measures as outlined in the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), that a Harris administration is certainly going to continue. Parts of Harris’ success in development cooperation with African countries will rely on attracting American companies in public-private partnerships. The US–Africa Leaders’ Summit helped restore trust and foster investments through agreements like the Memorandum of Understanding with the African Continental Free Trade Area (AfCFTA).
Additionally, the Biden-Harris administration reaffirmed African partners’ role as key actors in addressing global challenges. In fact, the first paragraph of the US strategy toward Sub-Saharan Africa puts strong emphasis on African agency and leadership, also with a view to asserting US interests at the global level. Words were followed by deeds, as the current US administration has backed African agency in international organizations. It co-financed the African Union’s (AU) implementation of its Agenda 2063, lobbied for a seat for the AU in the G20, and advocated for a third seat for an African on the World Bank and IMF boards. As before Harris’ trip to Ghana, Tanzania and Zambia in the spring of 2023, the White House missed no opportunity to emphasize the genuine interest in good partnerships by pointing out that these were unaffected by strategic competition with China. Her agenda in Accra and Dar es Salaam included promoting open societies with a particular focus on women empowerment and the strengthening of LGBTQ+ rights, thus contrasting the ultra-conservative, chauvinistic stance of Donald Trump.
Harris’ visit to Lusaka mainly focused on discussing corporate investment in the country. However, several African governments do not seem to prioritize the incentives of duty-free trade with the United States. The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) protocol exempts governments that have seized power through coups or are involved in human rights violations from duty-free trade with the US. Maintaining their own position of power is the top priority in their neo-sovereign policies anyway. In recent years, the exempted governments of Mali, Burkina Faso, Guinea, Niger, Gabon and the Central African Republic have opted instead for stronger partnerships with Russia on the continent that do not invoke such exclusion criteria. The Democratic Party’s overall course seems to have recognized that African governments exercise their agency in international affairs more self-confidently than ever, and that external pressure on their policies is met with a dismissive response. For a Harris-Walz administration, it will continue to be about holding course, building trust, championing multilateralism and involving the private sector in development programs. The challenges here overlap with the EU’s in the new Samoa Agreement with the Organisation of the African, Caribbean and Pacific States – and thus unfold potential for more coherent cooperation between Brussels and Washington.
Same Topics, Different Ideas: What to Expect from Donald Trump
There is not a single reference in the Republican program on a potential Africa policy. The party’s foreign policy ambitions are focused exclusively on the Pacific region and alliances in the Middle East nurtured during the previous Trump administration. More can be learned from the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 playbook, whose close ties to him Trump only incredulously tries to deny. This roadmap, tailor-made for Trump to implement his archconservative, ultra-religious and often incoherent ideas as soon as he takes office, would be a rupture in America’s liberal democratic stance and foreign policy. Project 2025’s foreign policy ambitions also mirror domestic priorities. Policies with regard to Africa are to a large extent embedded in the concept of strategic competition with China and Russia.
Unilateralism over Multilateralism
Instead of a watering can principle of American engagement, particularly through USAID, the playbook calls for cooperation only with those governments that follow the American course in world politics and thus promise success. In addition to economic win-win situations, this is measured at the political level by the voting behavior of partner countries against the bloc voting with China and Russia in international forums such as the UN General Assembly. Instead of Official Development Assistance (ODA), private sector players are to take on a stronger role in strategic partnerships. This would result in restructuring of USAID and cutting the budget they channel to UN agencies, such as World Food Programme, or NGOs. Although the functioning of the international NGO sector is not the most efficient; a withdrawal from multilateral commitments and collaborating with NGOs, however, will not only (over)burden national bodies, but also denigrate those international partners who value reliable cooperation on global governance issues. It has to be in the US’ interest to maintain good relations to those partners who uphold human rights and international law in order to penalize any violations of the norms by Russian actions – whether they happen in the Sahel or in Ukraine.
Exporting Domestic Culture War Positions
Moreover, US unilateral action will lead to noticeable rifts, for instance in energy policy. Trump and the Project 2025 authors praise fossil fuels as engines of sustainable development that will boost the economy through private sector partnerships. This may work in the short term, but in the medium and long term it will exacerbate the already precarious to catastrophic climate impacts in both regions of the world. Alongside bilateral Russian nuclear energy agreements, African governments and delegates at climate summits would now be navigating between two Western approaches: Washington’s climate-impact-denying growth ideology and the EU’s moderate climate policy. Other domestic culture wars are also projected outward: while the party program tries to suggest that it stands for the marginalized, it simultaneously pushes LGBTQ+ discriminatory policies, including in its engagement with African societies. A group of partners has been re-discovered to disseminate this: faith-based organizations (FBOs). Whether the predominantly Muslim FBOs on the African continent would want to support these ideas after Trump’s Muslim and refugee ban by executive order, which he has announced to reintroduce, appears doubtful.
Encouraging Trump to Break Taboos: Geopolitics in the Horn of Africa
The authors of the playbook express concern over a decline in geostrategic influence, particularly in the Horn of Africa. This region is vital, as a significant portion of global maritime trade traverses the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea. In neighboring Yemen, Ansarallah –commonly known as the Houthi rebels– is designated by the US as a terrorist organization. Meanwhile, the US operates throughout the Horn from its key military base Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. However, China’s expanding presence — marked by heavy investments in regional ports under its Belt and Road Initiative and the opening of its first African military base, also in Djibouti in 2017 — is seen as eroding US influence. To counter this, former diplomats from the Trump administration and the playbook’s authors urge him to recognize Somaliland’s statehood as a strategic response. The geopolitical consequences would be enormous, both near and far. It would break with decades of reticence and the acknowledgement that only the African Union should be the first actor to announce such a decision. It would also give impetus to the third reorganization of borders since the independence of African states – in Western Sahara and Rabat, in Biafra and Abuja, as well as in Azawad and Bamako, this will be closely monitored.
Navigating between the Familiar and the Unpredictable
The latter example illustrates the biggest difference between the two positions: Under Trump, the “America First” principle is also an unequivocal part of the ideas for engagement in Africa – mostly without recognizing international organizations and multilateral approaches. African governments would have to be forced to grudgingly go along with a new course for reasons such as power dependencies, contractual obligations and other commitments. NGOs, CSOs and other non-governmental partners would have to decide to what extent they want to adapt their work in order to ensure alignment with new US programs. Under a Harris-Walz administration, on the other hand, African partners would be able to build on the strategic alignment initiated during the Biden-Harris years – but certainly not without disregarding the strategic competition between the USA with China and Russia.
Jonas Schaaf
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