Why Trump may not be too bad for Africa, By Jideofor Adibe

The November 5, 2024 Presidential election in the USA has come and gone. Americans have spoken. Donald Trump is returning to the White House as the country’s 47th President with a convincing win, poling 312 electoral votes to Kamala Harris’ 226.

There are several observations on how Trump’s second term in office could possibly impact on Africa:
A major fear of many African leaders is not just that Trump, widely regarded as a racist, might cut America’s humanitarian aid to Africa. The belief is that Africa will be a lower priority for him than it is for other world leaders, and that he will prioritise transactional relationship in which aids and grants would be drastically cut. In August 2024 for instance, during a visit to Dakar, Senegal, Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration, Julieta Valls Noyes, announced more than $64 million in humanitarian assistance for Sub-Saharan Africa, which reportedly brought the total “U.S. humanitarian assistance in Sub-Saharan Africa to more than $3.8 billion so far in Fiscal Year 2024. The United States is proud to be the largest single humanitarian donor to Africa/Sub-Saharan Africa globally”, a briefing from the Office of the Spokesperson to the US Department of State, claimed on August 24, 2024. While we do not know the nature of the humanitarian assistance the money is meant for, we do know that aids, whether tied or untied, are tools of foreign policy and there is an unresolved debate on whether aid facilitates or hinders economic development. Following from this, a Trump presidency cutting aid to Africa could help to wean African leaders of their ‘begging bowl syndrome”, and bring some respect to the continent.

There are also legitimate concerns that a Trump presidency may lead to massive deportation of ‘illegal immigrants’ and a tightening of immigration rules for Africans and others from developing countries. True, this may affect the remittance in-flows from African migrants who have not regularized their stay in the country. However, American institutions are so strong that there will be serious legal challenges if the Trump government takes extreme measures against illegal immigrants or on immigration rules. The tightening of immigration rules in America, and even the likely deportation of some Africans, as bad as it may be for Africa in the short term, however could also lead to a greater push to make the continent better, which would eventually curtail the desire by some to vote with their feet.

What would be Trump’s trade policy towards Africa? Trump ran his campaign under the moniker, MAGA – Make America Great Again. He is certainly not a multilateralist – meaning he is not likely to depend on multilateral institutions like the United Nations and its agencies in efforts to solve America’s problems. Trump had declared during his first term that he would not renew the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which is due for renewal in 2025. Created in 2,000 and renewed in 2015, AGOA gives countries in sub-Saharan Africa preferential access to U.S. markets, allowing them to export products to the United States tariff-free. The truth however is that the benefits from AGOA are exaggerated. For instance under AGOA, eligible sub-Saharan African countries (35 countries as of May 2023) stand to benefit from the U.S. trade programme, but AGOA utilisation rates and results vary widely. Kenya and Lesotho have some of the highest AGOA utilisation rates – 88 per cent of Kenyan exports and 99 per cent of Lesotho’s exports – mostly apparel products for both countries. Remarkably, almost half of all beneficiary countries under AGOA have a utilisation rate of 2 per cent or lower, meaning that about 98 per cent of US imports from those eligible countries were subject to US tariffs. During his 2024 campaign, Trump pledged to implement a universal 10 per cent income tariff on all foreign-made goods. Trump could paradoxically be a wake-up call to those African leaders manacled by the neo-liberal brand of economics pushed down Africa’s throat by the Bretton Woods institutions and which never worked anywhere.

Even if Trump wants to, can he in reality be able to make America pursue purely isolationist foreign and economic policies? I doubt it. The truth is that a dominant world power which still wants to retain its global hegemony in the face of overt economic competition from China and efforts by a resurgent Russia to create a multipolar world that will whittle down, if not overthrow its Western security, economic and governance systems, cannot afford to be fully isolationist. With groups like BRICS+ expanding to create alternatives to the Bretton Woods institutions and the SWIFT system, the USA can only go fully isolationist at its peril.

There is also the Truman Doctrine, a policy enunciated by President Harry Truman in 1947 which made it an article of faith for the US to contain Soviet expansionism wherever it reared its head. With Russia, which succeeded the Soviet Union trying to reclaim the glory of the old Soviet Union by projecting power onto the global space, there are already visible signs of the activation of the Truman Doctrine. Despite the supposed personal relationship between Trump and Putin, it is unlikely that the US would remain content for Russia to continue expanding its influence in Africa and Asia without trying to contain it.

Despite his unflattering reputation, we may also pose the question of what we have really gained from former US Presidents we cozied up to, contra those we had very dim views of. Good examples here are Barrack Obama, the 44th President and George W Bush, the 43rd US President. In the run-up to the election of Barrack Obama as the first Black President of the USA in 2012, Africans were literally falling over themselves to offer him support as our ‘cousin’. With an African father from Kenya, we appropriated him as a fellow African who can understand Africa’s problem. True, he organized the US-Africa summit in 2014 and started the Africa Power initiative, but these were more of gesture politics than anything substantial. In contrast, there was angst in Africa and African American community when George W Bush was campaigning to be US president in 2000. He was thought to be a spoilt child, a C-average student and a bit aloof, if not racist. His Democratic rival, Al Gore, was overwhelmingly preferred by Africans and African Americans. Yet, under George W Bush, African Americans were given choice positions in government. George W Bush also set up the President’s Emergency Plan For AIDS Relief (PEPFAR/Emergency Plan) to address the global HIV/AIDS epidemic and help save the lives of those suffering from the disease, primarily in Africa. PEPFAR is said to be the largest health initiative ever initiated by one country to address a disease. Remarkably Obama cut funding for PEPFAR. Also Obama refused repeatedly to sell weapons to the country to fight Boko Haram on human rights concern. Ironically it was Donald Trump who sold 12-high tech aircraft to Nigeria in the fight against Boko Haram despite a damning 2017 Human Rights Report. Similarly the Obama’s regime’s role in NATO’s attacks on Libya in 2011 is said to be one of the reasons for the upsurge in terrorist activities especially in Mali. President Obama was also accused of talking down on Africans and African Americans during his presidency. Yes, Trump is racist and profiles Africans but so are some of our own leaders, and we routinely profile and demonise one another.

While Trump could be unpredictable, he appears consistently fascinated by ‘deals’, and during his first term, constantly talked of offering countries ‘deals’ – a term commonly used by business people but rarely by politicians or Presidents. Trump usually imagines himself as the ultimate dealmaker so he may be offering deals to even countries he famously regarded as ‘shithole’ countries depending on the leverages those countries could bring to the table or what he wants to use them to achieve. A quote from Trump’s book, The Art of the Deal (1987) could probably provide an insight on how to deal with the 47th President of the USA: “I never get too attached to one deal or one approach. For starters, I keep a lot of balls in the air, because most deals fall out, no matter how promising they seem at first.”

Jideofor Adibe isp rofessor of Political Science and International Relations at Nasarawa State University and founder of Adonis & Abbey Publishers (www.adonis-abbey.com). He can be reached at: 0705 807 8841 (WhatssApp and Text messages only).