Trump invites China to make itself at home in Africa

Since taking office in January, US President Donald Trump’s Africa ‘strategy’ has been even more short-sighted and tin-earned than his most trenchant critics might have feared.

Never one to show much of an interest in the continent, Trump appears to have veered from the apathy of his first term – when he didn’t visit a single African country – to outright hostility.

In June, Trump banned citizens from seven African countries from travelling to the United States. In a rambling speech, citing risks from terrorism and a recent attack in Boulder, Colorado, as well as the prevalence of visa overstays, Trump justified the exclusion of citizens of Chad, Republic of the Congo, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Libya, Somalia, and Sudan. Partial restrictions have also been imposed on citizens from Burundi, Sierra Leone and Togo.

The proclamation followed just weeks after the degrading spectacle of Trump’s Oval Office meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who he ambushed in front of the international media with a cynically-edited video recycling discredited allegations of the mass killing of white farmers.

That shameful, unbecoming performance was the latest incident in the spiralling relations between the countries under Trump, who has already expelled the South African ambassador and railed repeatedly against the country on his so-called ‘Truth Social’ platform.

That’s not all. In April, Trump slapped tariffs on scores of African countries as part of his ‘Liberation Day’ overhaul of US trade relations – with the hardest-hit nations being Lesotho, whose goods will be hit with a tariff of 50%; Madagascar (47%); and Mauritius (40%). Just a few of the other hard hit countries are Botswana (37%); Angola (32%) South Africa (30%); Libya (31%); Algeria (30%); and Tunisia (28%). 

Those and other tariffs have been reduced to a 10% universal levy for three months pending further negotiations, but the damage to trade is already clear. The long established but soon to lapse African Growth and Opportunity Act, which provides African manufacturers with tariff-free access to the US, is likely to join development agency USAID – also dismantled by Trump – in the dustbin of history. 

China spies an opportunity

At the same time as Trump is taking a wrecking ball to diplomatic and economic relations, arch-foe China is recalibrating its Africa strategy. In mid-June, Beijing announced plans to eliminate all tariffs on imports from 53 African sovereign states with which it maintains diplomatic ties. Eswatini, the only African nation that recognises Taiwan’s sovereignty, is the only exception. Africa’s most underdeveloped economies, which already gained full access to the Chinese market last year, have been promised additional assistance to boost their exports. In a thinly-veiled barb at Trump, the agreement “call(s) on all countries, the United States in particular, to return to the right track of resolving trade disputes through consultation based on equality, respect and mutual benefit”.

China is evidently looking to displace the US in the few markets where America is still the trading partner of choice – these include Lesotho, Mauritius, Morocco, Egypt, Nigeria, and Kenya. China already reigns supreme as an export destination for goods from the DRC, Angola, Zambia and others. Some data suggests that the countries are already tied when it comes to annual FDI flows, even as China has had to reduce its investment in Africa in recent years as it wards off domestic economic pressures. 

Make yourselves comfortable

Quite what Trump’s malice towards African partners is supposed to achieve is anyone’s guess. 

But with the US president’s flickering attention span now dominated by the Israel-Iran war, as well as his stuttering attempt to bring peace to Russia and Ukraine, it is hard to see how Africa will figure positively in his plans. Indeed, he is virtually opening the door for China, and inviting them to walk right in and get comfortable.