U.S.-Africa Policy in a Second Trump Term
Panelists discuss how a second Trump administration could reshape U.S.-Africa relations, whether security, economic, and diplomatic engagement will deepen or decline, and how to define the U.S. strategic role in the continent while countering China’s growing influence.
This meeting is part of CFR’s Transition 2025 series, which examines the major foreign policy issues confronting the Trump administration.
SMITH: Thank you and welcome, everybody, to today’s Council on Foreign Relations meeting, titled “U.S.-Africa Policy in a Second Trump Term.” This meeting is part of CFR’s Transition 2025 Series, which examines the major foreign policy issues confronting the Trump administration.
I’m Shannon Smith. I’m the Middle East and Africa Section research manager for the Congressional Research Service, and I’ll be presiding over today’s discussion.
We are joined today by the Honorable Johnnie Carson, who’s senior advisor to the president of the U.S. Institute of Peace. He’s former assistant secretary of state for African affairs, former U.S. ambassador to Kenya, Zimbabwe, and Uganda, and former national intelligence officer for Africa, as well as a CFR member.
Cameron Hudson. He’s the senior associate for the Africa Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Cameron was previously with the Atlantic Council’s Africa Center. He served as chief of staff to presidential special envoys for Sudan, and during the Bush administration as the director for African affairs at the NSC.
Ebenezer Obadare is the Douglas Dillon senior fellow for Africa studies on the Council on Foreign Relations. Before joining CFR, he was professor of sociology at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. His most recent book is titled Pastoral Power, Clerical State: Pentecostalism: Gender and Sexuality in Nigeria.
We are here today to discuss U.S. Africa policy. Africa was not raised as a particularly significant issue during the presidential campaign, but as we are already seeing, with the events in the Democratic Republic of Congo this week and the takeover of Goma, Africa is going to be on the international agenda. So I’d like to start today with Sudan, home to the largest humanitarian and displacement crisis in the world. Cameron, you recently wrote in a Foreign Policy piece, quote, “Washington has strategic interests and untapped leverage in Sudan that go well beyond the conflict’s toll that makes Trump uniquely positioned to advance solutions to end the war,” close quote. What do you see as the opportunities for the United States to help bring an end to the civil war in Sudan?
HUDSON: Well, thanks, Shannon. And it’s great to be with everybody today.
Listen, I think that the president has been pretty, pretty clear in terms of what his foreign policy priorities are. And right at the top of that list is this notion of expanding Middle East peace. He had this sort of signature foreign policy achievement in his first term, the Abraham Accords, which, for those who recall, Sudan is one of four Arab states that signed onto that agreement. It didn’t do it at the time fully voluntarily, because it was essentially a transaction that the Trump administration put to the Sudanese in exchange for removing them from the state sponsor of terrorism list, which was at the top of the list of things that Sudan was asking the United States to do.
But, as I argue, that agreement sort of tied the Trump administration’s fate to Sudan. And now, as it comes into office declaring that it’s going to not only strengthen that agreement but expand it to include other Arab states, notably Saudi Arabia, I make the argument that it’s hard to imagine strengthening an agreement when one of the signatories to that agreement is on the verge of state collapse. Which Sudan is right now. Thirteen million people displaced in the conflict. You know, more than half of the country of fifty million people in need of dire humanitarian assistance. On the verge of famine in many parts of the country. So really, an extremely dire scenario.
And I think one thing that goes, I think, un-talked about a lot in Washington is the fact that many of the same Arab states that President Trump believes can be signatories to an expanded Abraham Accords are on one side of this conflict or another. The United Arab Emirates, it’s been established now, has been the principal backer of the Rapid Support Forces militia, which the Biden administration declared was committing genocide in the final days of the administration, just a few weeks ago. And on the other side you have Egypt, you have Saudi Arabia, you have other Arab Gulf states supporting the Sudan Armed Forces. And so the idea that he’s going to make an expanded peace while these countries are essentially battling in a proxy war in Sudan, sort of, you know, I struggle to see that.
And so, given President Trump’s, I think, well established, you know, relationships with Arab leaders—whether it’s President Sisi, MBS, MBZ, President Erdoğan of Turkey, the royal family of Qatar, I mean, you name it—he has nurtured relationships at the highest levels with states who are playing a role and who have an active interest in the outcome in Sudan. And so I think that, as I wrote, positions him rather uniquely to play a dealmaking role, to bring these powers together, and to enforce a ceasefire agreement that will at least, I think in the short term, you know, alleviate some of the humanitarian conditions that we have struggled, you know, with for the past, you know, more than a year, to try to get a handle on and try to get access to.
And then, hopefully set up conditions for—you know, for what comes next politically in Sudan. I don’t think anybody has a roadmap for what a transitional government or a new form of governance in the country might look like because the conflict has gotten in the way of any conversations about that. So I think it’s a necessary but not sufficient condition that we achieve some kind of ceasefire. And I think that the Trump administration, given what it has said are its goals in the wider region, is uniquely positioned to help bring that about.
SMITH: Ambassador Carson, maybe I can turn to you then on this question that this sort of ceasefire being necessary but not sufficient. Could you talk to us a little bit more about the challenges of the Sudan War and its significance for the region and for the United States?
CARSON: Well, thank you, Shannon. It’s good to be with everyone to talk about Africa, an important topic. With respect to Sudan, I think that Cameron is right about the magnitude of the problem. We see today Sudan as being the worst humanitarian crisis in the world, a humanitarian crisis that dwarfs the terrible situation that has occurred in Gaza, and dwarfs even that which we are seeing in Ukraine today. We see roughly ten to fifteen million people in Sudan itself, displaced by the fighting that has gone on between the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudan military. We see 800,000 people, nearly a million, who are in dire need of food aid. And we see nearly three million Sudanese refugees displaced in places like Chad, South Sudan, Egypt, and the Central African Republic. The crisis is enormous, but the response has not been nearly sufficient to deal with it.
Yes, there is a possibility that the Trump administration may see, as Cameron has said, an opportunity to bolster the Abraham Accords by intervening in a positive negotiating fashion. What I hope will happen is that the administration will take the crisis in Sudan and the Horn seriously, that it will appoint a new special envoy to look at the issues in the region. Thirdly, that it will galvanize greater international support from our partners to work to help solve this problem, lead an initiative that brings the African states and some of the key Arab states into a major conference on how to resolve this issue by putting pressure on the two sides and reducing the malign influences of outside partners.
It also means putting greater pressure on countries on the eastern side of the Gulf. The United Arab Emirates has been accused at the Security Council and in a number of documents as being one of the principal supporters of this conflict. It is getting the African Union, IGAD and the East African community to come together to work more in unity and not in difference on working this problem out. But a ceasefire is absolutely critical. It’s a complex issue but it does require leadership—significant global leadership. And that’s not been there. The United Nations secretary-general has not played a significant, sustained, and serious role in this conflict.
It is also important to point out to the countries on the east side of the gulf that their interests—their long-term economic, political, and security interests are to be seen in a stable and largely democratic success in both Sudan and in Ethiopia. And that their desires to expand their economic influence in the region is best done through and under stability and peace. We know that the Gulf Arab states want to and are expanding their economic interests, but they will be capped by the continuation of the conflict and the destruction and dislocation that is currently going on.
But more important than looking at it as an opportunity to work through the Abraham Accords, that can be—that can be a path, what I’m looking for and hope that there will be a notion that it is in the interests of the administration to work for peace. And that means being engaged as a leader in bringing together both the African, the European key partners, and the Arabs into a discussion on how to make this happen.
SMITH: Thank you both. Maybe we’ll shift west for the moment and think about West Africa now. So over the last five or so years we’ve had a whole series of developments, coups. We’ve had the ouster of the French from multiple countries and the departure of U.S. forces from Niger. We’ve had the diminishment of ECOWAS, spread of violent extremism, rising Russian influence. Factors that have all kind of reshaped the political landscape of the region. Ebenezer, turning to you first, how do you think these issues are likely to come out—to play out in the coming years, as the Trump administration faces West Africa?
OBADARE: Thank you, Shannon. I think in order to apprehend the question, I think it’s important to start with what’s our theory of what’s going on. A lot is going on in that region as we speak. And it’s interesting that we’re having this conversation on the day when the exit of the so-called AES states from ECOWAS has been finalized. ECOWAS is the Economy Community of West African States. It’s the—I would say, maybe next to the EU, the most significant and the most important regional body in the whole world. It’s being a successful—one of the most successful examples of regional action. And the split—the apparent split, or the former split now, I think is likely to be—is to be regretted.
But that’s not the only thing that is going on. It’s also the fact that many of the countries in the subregion are facing long-term political destabilization due to a decades-long Islamic insurgency from Boko Haram, in the case of northern Nigeria, but also from some of some Boko Haram affiliates—ISWAP and the rest—across the subregion. Especially the three renegade states that have just apparently left ECOWAS. But the third thing, maybe on the much more positive note, is that in the subregion we’ve had a democratic family that seems to be showing no sign of flagging. Senegal has successfully transitioned from President Macky Sall to President Diomaye Faye. And this was due to some of the positive activities of civil society elements, trade union, students.
So you have a society in the hands of a dilemma in terms of the direction in which it should go. You can go in the AES direction, insofar as those three junta-led states are taking their inspiration from Russia and China in terms of the model of governance that will prevail in the subregion. Or you can also go in the direction of Senegal, Ghana, which also recently held a successful election, and Nigeria, where democracy has been the order of the day since 1999.
The challenge for the United States going forward then is how to pitch its tent. How to, on the one hand, recognize that there’s a lot of anti-French, anti-Western resentment in the region, but at the same time to see the opportunities for intervention in strengthening democratic institutions in the twelve ECOWAS countries that still remain largely democratic, while building alliances to make sure that Chinese attempts and Russian attempts to divide the region through its collaboration with Mali, Niger, and the junta, to make sure that that does not succeed.
In order to do that, and I will say this on the final note, I think it’s going to be important to realize that the United States is not going to be able to do that by insisting on America first. At very least, it has to have a very elastic definition of America first, meaning that America first should not necessarily mean that Africa last. That there has to be a lot of realism about how to think about American interest and that it’s important to think about those areas in which American interest and African interest can converge. And West Africa can be the space in which this convergence happens.
SMITH: Following up on that, that question of convergence, you’ve written quite a bit about religion, and specifically written about the ties between President Trump and the Evangelical community. How do you see those issues potentially affecting U.S. policy?
OBADARE: I think going forward—thank you for the question—religion is going to be extremely important. It’s always been one part of foreign policy that people have typically not paid attention to. And if there’s an opportunity to do that, it couldn’t get any better than this. And this is the fact that President Trump appears to have—to have a natural—what you might call a natural political base in Africa. And it is among Evangelicals and Pentecostals. Now the reason is, why do these people like Trump so much? And why are they, in their own private spaces, celebrating what they call his second coming?
And it’s very simple. One, they like the fact that he takes their side as a Christian, and that they see him as the lightning rod in the culture wars not just in the United States, but the perception that in many parts of Africa the Christian religion is under the cosh and that President Trump is at least one president who has come out openly in their defense. But the other side of this is the fact that they perceive President Trump to be the one who will help in the in the fight against the Islamic insurgency. So if you talk about to Middle-Belters in Nigeria, for instance, what they want is a relief from the attacks by various Islamic insurgent groups.
But it’s the same thing when you go to Burkina Faso, when you go to Ghana, when you go to Mali. In any of those areas where Islamic insurgency appears to have had the upper hand, people there tend to see President Trump as a kind of liberator who is going to help them. One way in which the United States can take advantage of this is to recognize that that base is there, but to also see that there is plenty of interest—that there is sharpened appetite for American moral support and military support in the fight against Islamic insurgency. And this is something that I think, going forward, the United States can capitalize on and take advantage of.
SMITH: Maybe we could—
CARSON: Shannon, can I say something about—
SMITH: Please do.
CARSON: West Africa, if I can? And I agree with everything that Ebenezer has said. But I think there are also some other key points that should be made here. One is that the U.S. should fully implement the Global Fragility Act, especially as it relates to the countries in West Africa. Second, it should staff up its embassies and provide greater both bilateral and regional assistance to the coastal region and those states. It should also work very hard to continue to promote both democracy, development, and economic growth. The states in the region and the people in the region, especially along the coastal states, from Côte d’Ivoire down to Nigeria, support democracy. They want democracies that work. They want economic development and economic growth that creates productivity and jobs and provides them with greater government services.
It is the absence of democracy, it is the absence of economic growth, it is the absence of development, it is the failure to deal effectively with the security problems in the Sahel, it is the failure to deal with the climate change issues in the Sahel which have generated the return of military regimes. The counter to that is putting more resources and more support behind development, economic growth, and democracy, and deliverance of service. We cannot forget, and we should not forget, that Nigeria is predominantly the most important country in West Africa, and arguably one of the most important threesome in Africa itself—it’s Africa’s largest democracy, its largest economy, and it has one of the most vibrant and dominant economic cities in Lagos.
It is important that democracy not be allowed to slip away in coastal West Africa. And support for Senegal’s democracy, Ghana’s successful recent election, Nigeria’s successful elections two years ago are things to build on. And we have to watch out for what may be democratic backsliding in places like Togo and Benin. Their inability to deliver on democracy, development, and economic progress leaves them open to having the problems of the Sahel and the regional issues there go down and reach the coast.
SMITH: Ambassador, following up a little bit on that and thinking about the issues of supporting democracy as well as sort of perceptions of China, and a number of political opinion surveys in Africa often seem to—the United States and China, the question is posed, you know, what is your preferred model of development? It varies quite a bit by country to country. China is sometimes ranked more highly. In his opening statement at the confirmation hearing, Secretary Rubio said, quote, “The Communist Party of China that leads the PRC is the most potent and dangerous near-peer adversary this nation has ever confronted.” How do you see these perceptions of the People’s Republic of China influencing the Trump administration’s policies toward Africa? And how do you think African governments will respond? And I’ll ask the others on the panel to take this up as well.
CARSON: Yeah. Thanks, Shannon, for the question. There’s no doubt that the United States is still held in very, very high regard across Africa. The polling data, whether it comes from Afrobarometer or The Economist Intelligence Unit continues to show that the United States has a very high favorability rating across the continent. But it is also true that over the last two decades, largely as a result of the Belt and Road Initiative, China’s major investments in infrastructure and development, as well as its soft power, the use of its Confucius Institutes, have made significant inroads into its favorability, lifting it higher. There’s no question. So the U.S. still is favorably seen, but China has risen as a result of its activities there.
But let me speak to the broader issue, if I if I could, and the question that you asked. Countering China’s activities, competing with China’s activities in Africa, should, in fact, be one of America’s priorities. But it should not, in fact, be the first or second priority. The U.S. has strong social, economic, political, and security interests in seeing a strong, developed, and stable African continent. And our objectives should be to focus on strengthening U.S.-African relations. Not seeing Africa through the prism of Chinese foreign policy, Chinese activities in Africa, Russian activities in Africa, but through American interest in Africa.
The United States remains home to the largest African-origin diaspora in the developed world. Some 15 percent of Americans are Black. And we should recognize that that provides us with a historical linkage as well as an important cultural and increasingly important economic linkage. We should recognize that Africa is, in fact, the fastest-growing continent in the world. In less than twenty-five years from now, a country like Nigeria will overtake the United States as the third-largest country in the world, behind India and China. We must recognize also that in 2050—or, before 2050 we will see one quarter of the global population coming out of Africa. And by the turn of the century, we will see 40 percent of the world’s population being Africa.
That is a market. That’s an important force for economic competition. But on the political side, we shouldn’t forget that if we look up towards New York, the largest geographical regional body in the United Nations is Africa. Fifty-four states. We need them to be partners with us in dealing with transnational global issues, whether it is countering extremism and countering terrorism, whether it’s countering money laundering—money laundering, whether it’s fighting climate change and combating climate change, and whether we are seeking their support in preventing China’s expansionism in the South China Sea, in Taiwan, and also combating North Korea’s mal-influences in Ukraine, along with that of Russia.
They are partners. And we should look at them as partners. Africa has agency. It has choices. Our primary objective is to strengthen and look at Africa and look at the individual states in Africa as potential allies and partners in developments and progress that we share together. Yes, combating China and countering China’s negative influences in Africa is important. But we need to have something on the table, not just rhetoric against them. We need to be having something on the table that brings Africa with us as we also point out what China is doing negatively, not only to them but in their regional engagements as well.
So countering China is important, but our policy in Africa should be, first and foremost, based on what is good for the United States. Just because China suddenly decides one day to pull out of Africa does not mean that the United States has lost its interest in Africa. Ours is more historical, long standing, and durable. And we should be looking at Africa for what it is in the future. Last one on that one is I look—we might have a—you know, we may talk a little bit about the Democratic Republic of the Congo today. I hope we do. But there, again, look at what is happening there. And look at the importance of a place like the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the enormous importance it plays in helping to combat climate change and providing the global community with the minerals that are needed to move forward in the green economy, in the digital economy that we live in.
Every person who’s watching this has a little bit of the DRC in their hands or next to them, because you can’t do anything without those two key ingredients of coltan and tantalum, which come out of the Democratic Republic of the Congo. We need the continent for its minerals, and we need the continent as partners. We need to look at it as Africa-centric—not through the prism of Beijing, not through the prism of Moscow, but through what are American interests in Africa.
SMITH: Cameron, touching briefly on this thinking about the some of the issues that Johnnie raised, critical minerals, one of them. Among them, the events in Congo. But can you give us a quick take on what you—you know, your foremost advice would be in thinking about this question of how the United States should consider China when approaching Africa?
HUDSON: Sure. Well, I think, you know, we can—we can just reflect back to the first Trump administration again, when they rolled out an Africa strategy which was very much framed around competing with China. And not because there was opportunity in Africa, as Ambassador Carson said, but because we were going to do battle and compete with China everywhere around the globe, and Africa was just another—you know, another domain where we were going to—where we were going to confront them. And the Trump administration the first time got a lot of backlash from African leaders and the African public because it was framed as a kind of new Cold War, which has very negative connotations, you know, for African publics.
And so I think the new administration would be wise to both recognize that that competing with China is a priority everywhere around the world, but how we talk about it and how we frame it, I think, is what is going to be picked up on in Africa. And it’s going to shape attitudes and it’s going to shape our success in being able to compete. I think the first and—you know, first and foremost, competing is about showing up. And I think we can say that as much as there’s a bipartisan track record in Washington on Africa, there’s also a bipartisan lack of showing up, right? I mean, like, we haven’t been present in the way that China has been present on the continent, either, you know, developmentally, economically.
China has changed the tone. They have a very different tone in the relationship with African states, which, I think, going back multiple administrations here, we’ve not yet shifted that tone, right, in terms of a clientelistic kind of state, a paternalistic kind of view in the popular, you know, conception. In the media conception in this country, Africa is a place of problems that require fixing. They require our—they require us to incentivize our companies to go in there with massive, you know, incentives, because it is highly risky. You know, if you pick up a Wall Street Journal or a New York Times from the last, you know, decade, you know, how many of those articles are about disease, and famine, and civil war, and coups, and instability, right?
And those are the news sources that are informing our policy leaders, our business leaders, and our general public, right? And if you were to go ask Chinese people what their attitude is towards Africa, many of them would say it’s the wild west. It is a land of opportunity. It’s a place where we go to make money. You know, there’s been 10,000 Chinese businesses opened in Angola in the last ten years—10,000, right? Those are small mom and pop businesses doing export-import. They’re doing small scale, you know, business. But it is because China doesn’t see the level of risk that American businesses and the American public see when they look at Africa.
So all of us are Africanists. We drank the Kool-Aid on Africa. We understand why it matters to U.S. national security, why it makes good sense to spend more time and to have more diplomats. And we understand the commercial reasons. But we have a lot to overcome. And I think, you know, as much as I agree with all of the facts and figures that Ambassador Carson laid out, the problem is—we have a temporal problem. Which is, Africa is always a continent of the future. It’s never the continent of today. And because we all exist in Washington, D.C. on a four year, you know, calendar, we can’t see past, you know, four years. We’re never going to see Africa in 2050 in 2025, right? And that’s the fact of the matter.
And I don’t see that changing because of, you know, the way our—the way our politics are in in this country. I think, you know, that that is the challenge, is how do we make Africa the continent of today? How do we make it, you know, more relevant? And, of course, the minerals, of course the population, of course the climate. But how you prioritize it on a day-to-day basis and kind of break through the kind of negative connotations that we continue to have through our media, I think, is a real—is a real struggle that, frankly, the Chinese, you know, don’t have to deal with.
SMITH: Ebenezer, I want to get in just a second to questions from the audience. But do you have a quick take on thinking about China here?
OBADARE: Yeah, yeah. Sure. So let me—let me take a different tack, like this. I think the fundamental question that China asks is actually not about China, it’s about the United States. So here is a way to think about it. If the challenge that—if you perceive that the challenge from China is economic, it’s Belt and Road, then your initiative in response to that will be the Lobito Corridor. So you Belt and Road me, I will Lobito Corridor you. That’s fine, right, in as far as—as far as that goes.
But what if you see it differently? What if you think the challenge that China poses is not merely economic. It’s also political, right? So China is just—is not just building roads, and airports, and railways, and all of that. It’s also doing something much more insidious. So it’s called, you know, all these political leadership training schools, which are basically—which is consistent with what I think Secretary Rubio was saying, which is at the end of the day China wants Africa to become a version of itself, politically speaking. Now, the United States does not want that. The United States wants to economically engage in Africa and nullify China. But I think the most important thing that the United States has to do, actually, it does not have anything to do with Africa in the in the primary sense in the long run.
It is this: The United States owes the world a continuity in perception and reality as a democratic country. The United States has an opportunity to construct a polarity between itself and China, to say we’re different from those guys. We understand your economic needs. We know where the shoe pinches. We are going to be with you all the way. But we also want you to know this, the model of governance that we offer is superior to China’s. We’re a democracy. Now say that, that means one thing. That we remain a democracy. And there’s never been a time in American history, at least over the last fifty years, that there’s been a threat to liberalism in the United States itself.
So it’s one thing for us to think about combating China at the economic level in Africa. And we should do that. But I think long term—this is what Ambassador Carson was saying—we should democratic institutions in Africa. But we can’t support democratic institutions in Africa without attending to our own democracy. People across the world look up to the United States as a symbol of strong democratic institutions. And I think going forward it’s going to be extremely—very, extremely important for the United States not just to signal that it's a democracy, but to continue to deepen its own democracy.
SMITH: Thank you so much for all of you.
So at this time, I would like to invite CFR members and guests to join our conversation with their questions. As a reminder, this meeting is on the record. And, Dinah, do we have questions?
OPERATOR: (Gives queuing instructions.)
We will take the first question from Michael Pelletier.
Q: Hi. Good morning and good afternoon. This is Michael Pelletier, former U.S. ambassador, currently with University of Houston.
And I want to just briefly thank my former boss, Johnnie Carson, and the others for their comments on China. I think the focus on U.S. interests and African interests so often have been forgotten or second—put in second place. I think it’s great to hear them put forward.
My question is, more specifically, given the history of the previous Trump administration, given the current initial direction of policy—things like cutting off aid or freezing aid—I’m wondering if the speakers could share their thoughts about ways in which subnational engagement might help support a continuity of U.S. interests in Africa, at a time when the federal government seems likely to be downplaying not only Africa but a lot of places in the world. I’m thinking of state and local government, universities, NGOs, private efforts, like what we saw with former Mayor Bloomberg stepping up when the U.S. withdrew from WHO again, and business interests, as Cameron mentioned. So I’m wondering if there’s a role subnational or non-federal government engagement can play to help maintain our contact and our engagement with Africa. Thanks.
SMITH: Ambassador, do you want to take this one?
CARSON: Shannon, thanks. Mike, good to hear from you. And glad to know that you’re teaching and doing well in Texas.
A very good question. It has a couple of parts to it, but let me start with the—with the positive part of it. I think, irrespective of what the U.S. government does over the next four years, I think there will be a continuing interest by U.S. institutions and organizations. I think that some of the best relationships and some of the best work being done in Africa today is in fact being done by American NGOs. I start with the Gates Foundation, which is doing extraordinary work in the healthcare field, in economic empowerment, women’s equity issues, women’s economic empowerment, support for young girls. They’re not the only ones, but I mention them as an indication of the kind of work that NGOs can do and continue to do.
I think that on the business side we see organizations like the Corporate Council on Africa working with members of the business community to expand the relationships between American corporations and African groupings. Investment in business and commerce are extraordinarily important. I think there are other avenues that are out there. We look at the growing level of sporting links between the National Basketball Association and the African Basketball Association. We see linkages between Hollywood and Nollywood, between the film industry, the digital industry. We see financial engagement from the—from some of the major card companies, some of the major tech companies—Google and Microsoft operating and expanding their linkages in places like Nairobi, and Lagos, and Ghana.
So I think there will be a continuation of this. And I come back to something that’s very important. This is a plug. I say it without hesitation. That one of the good things that was done by the last administration was to establish a Diaspora Engagement Council, an African Diaspora Engagement Council to draw on the African American community, the growing diaspora community in the United States, to help forge and build both those commercial, and those cultural, and those academic links between the United States and various African countries. The diaspora is, in fact, a powerful weapon on our side that does not exist in Moscow, does not exist in Beijing, does not exist in North Korea, or Tehran. And we should recognize that is an important element.
But whether you’re talking about academia, whether you’re talking about health, whether you’re talking about NGOs, it’s great. Last point on this is that I was very pleased just a mere four months ago to see three major NGOs come up with a Democracy Fund for West Africa, where we saw Ford Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, which is stepping into Africa with money, to support a West African Democracy Fund. So I think—whatever the U.S. government does, I think there will be a continuation of effort. I just hope that the U.S. government will continue to recognize the importance and value of having this relationship with the continent in its fifty-four states.
SMITH: Thank you. Dinah, shall we take another question?
OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Pearl Robinson.
Q: Am I unmuted?
OPERATOR: Yes.
Q: Great. I just want to say, I just thought that intervention by Obadare was just brilliant, the idea of connecting democratic deepening in Africa with democratic deepening in the United States. So I’m at Tufts University and I teach African politics. And I’ve been searching for a way to relaunch my approach to teaching African politics. And so I hit it—I found it today. And I wanted to make a couple of suggestions.
One is, I know the Council on Foreign Relations has this education division that’s developing materials that we can use in the classroom. I suggest that you make this one of the themes. If you have a way of—if somebody listening here has a way of having the Africa Committees in Congress have this theme as a topic, that would be very useful. And I’m also glad to hear that this is going to be on the record, because I’m going to use this session in my class. So I just wanted to thank you. This is very exciting to me today.
SMITH: Ebenezer, over to you to respond.
OBADARE: Thank you, Professor Robinson. Yeah, it’s a comment, so—but I’m also taking on board your suggestion. And I will pass it on to the appropriate people. But thank you, appreciate it.
OPERATOR: We will take the next question from Richard Joseph,
Q: Greetings. Thank you all very much. My hand reach out to embrace you all. We go back a long way.
There’s someone I wish was on this program. His name is Howard French. And I feel that Howard French on China and Africa, and especially his extraordinary book on China’s next continent. And it’s really—and, Cameron, what you had to say about the 10,000 Chinese businesses in Angola. And that’s a story we have seen all over the continent in many ways. And I think Howard French is the one who called attention to what was going on between China—not just China government, but China, Chinese people, enterprise—but also the other way. Africans and African enterprise and China. And Ebenezer will know this, I know this from my colleagues who are entrepreneurs in in Nigeria, who reach out to China. And I think that is—that is something that needs to be brought into the conversation. That not just the frame of conflict and competition with China, governments, ideologies, et cetera, et cetera, but people. You know, two nations, two peoples. And how the U.S. can really get into that conversation and that set of relations. I’ll stop there. Thank you.
SMITH: Thank you. Cameron, would you like to respond?
HUDSON: Well, thank you. Yeah. I mean, listen, I think that one thing that struck me the last time I was in southern Africa doing some research on Chinese investment and involvement, you know, Ebenezer talked about kind of the democracy model that the United States presents, which I—which I agree with. And I agree that it’s been weakened because of our own, you know, frailties emerging in our democracy. But what I hear time and again from African business leaders and even officials is that China presents a far more relevant development model to Africa. Because the Chinese come in and they say, we were you one generation ago. One generation ago, 80 percent of our country lived in rural areas, 80 percent of our country did not have electricity. And we have had the most aggressive and ambitious increase in wealth, in living standards, in urbanization of any country in the history of the Earth.
That’s a very powerful message to countries struggling with their development. And when the United States presents a different development model, or, frankly, a development model that is based on grants and charity and assistance, it’s not based on—primarily, on equity and doing business as equals. It is, how do we incentivize business to come in here? How do we give things to Africa to help them? It creates a relationship that I think Africans—and we’re hearing this from them—are tiring of. And that China has presented a model that is more compelling to them, at least in the—in the short term.
And of course, we understand all the political, you know, costs that come with that kind of, you know, state-led development model. But it is nonetheless, I think, a very attractive and compelling, you know, short-term model, especially and increasingly for African heads of state and officials who are increasingly feeling the pressure of delivering economic dividends to their people. It was Zambian President Hichilema who said, when Vice President Harris was there, “you cannot eat democracy.” And he, along with lots of other African leaders, are struggling with how they feed, how they house, how they create jobs for an exploding population.
And if we cannot present a more compelling development model, that isn’t just based on the World Bank and the IMF and institutions that we created and we control doling out resources to Africans on the condition that they do the things that we want them to do, then I think we’re going to continue to struggle with—this gets back to our competition with China—you know, going forward.
OPERATOR: We’ll take the next question from Witney Schneidman.
Q: Greetings to all. This has been a fascinating conversation.
I’m calling in from Johannesburg. And I was in Kampala two days ago at Mengo Hospital, which I’ve been working with for the last almost three decades, particularly the HIV/AIDS clinic. And I was sitting with the head of the HIV/AIDS clinic on Tuesday when the bomb dropped that all PEPFAR funds were being suspended. What this meant at Mengo Hospital was that the entire staff, twenty-six, would have to be let go by Friday. They would not be able to serve their 9,000 patients. And then, of course, we’ve seen sort of an update from State Department. Well, some funds can be used. So a lot of confusion.
So my question is, to Johnnie, and Cameron, and Ebenezer, how do we preserve the interests that you all have articulated in an environment that we may be going through, where there’s just a lot of chaos in our policy? We’re seeing the evisceration of USAID. We’ve seen in Trump 1.0, you know, sometimes Congress pushes back, and our interests are protected. But just curious about, you know, what you think this week means for Africa policy going forward? Thanks.
SMITH: Who would like to start?
CARSON: Shannon, I can—I can take the lead on this. I won’t touch on all the issues there. But let me just start by saying that PEPFAR, the president’s emergency program to prevent and combat the spread of HIV/AIDS, was established in 2003 by President George Bush. It was, of course, twenty years old a couple years ago. It has been the most successful international global health program ever established on a bilateral basis by any country in the world. And over its twenty-or-so years of existence, some twenty-five million lives have been saved. Some twenty-five million lives have been saved.
And a majority of those lives have been in Africa, because the HIV/AIDS virus started somewhere between the geographic area of the Eastern Congo and Rwanda, Burundi, Uganda zone. But many lives have been saved. And it’s a program that has won many accolades. It’s also a program that has received strong, strong support on both sides of the aisle, by both Republicans and Democrats. And it has also been supported by different administrations, both Democratic and Republican administrations. And it’s gone on to be a model for what can be done to fight a major global pandemic.
I hope, in response—a more pointed response, is that the bipartisan coalition on Capitol Hill that has supported the PEPFAR program for the last twenty-plus years will come together and request very strongly that the administration continue to honor this program, which is so widely respected on Capitol Hill by Democrats and Republicans, as well as across Africa among governments and the citizens who benefit. I would hope that the health community and the academic health community in the United States will raise its voice and show its strong support for the program. I hope former senators and members of the House who’ve been a part of supporting this program in the past will move forward in voicing their support for this program.
The elimination of this program opens Africa up to more health care concerns and disasters and undermines the good work that the United States has done in the past and will lead to questions about the longevity and sustainability of our commitments in the future. I could say more about other things, but I’ll stop with the comments on PEPFAR.
SMITH: We’ll take the last question from Meredith Berger.
Q: Thank you. Meredith Berger, former assistant secretary of the Navy for energy installations and environment under the Biden administration.
I wanted to ask a question about electrification. We saw—we recently saw a big investment come out, to the tune of billions of dollars, to bring electricity and the infrastructure across Africa. I heard several comments on climate change and how that all plays in. And I was wondering if the panelists could comment on what the investment that we recently saw announced means against what seems to be a change in the way that the United States is prioritizing energy, and how we retain American smart power and primacy in the world order as we see some, I think, differing messages coming out. Thank you.
SMITH: Cameron, do you want to take up energy?
HUDSON: Well, sure. I mean, listen, I think the Trump administration is clearly articulating a different set of policies with respect to—with respect to the development of fossil fuels. And I think that’s going to affect, you know, Africa positively, that change in in approach. We’ve heard, you know, from many African leaders the constraints that have been put on them in their efforts to develop their own indigenous oil and gas sectors as part of their own, you know, development of energy resources and electrification for the continent. And that we have, again, through our control and influence in the international financial institutions like the World Bank, constrained lending for the development of those kinds of indigenous projects on the continent in favorable—in favor of renewables.
And that was a policy choice that was made by the Biden administration and other, you know, Western governments, that the Trump administration seems to be trying to move back from or at least amend in some pretty important ways. And so I think there’s a pretty healthy debate that can be had. And I think on the African side they would say that they have contributed the least and continue to contribute the least to global climate change. And yet, they bear, you know, the brunt of many of those changes, or at least they are the least equipped to manage the climate change that is affecting them the most. And so I think that there is—you know, there is an opportunity, if they play it right, to frame this as an energy benefit to African states. I don’t know how they will frame it, but this has certainly been, I think, one of the—one of the quintessential examples that African leaders routinely point to.
And especially, you know, in the wake of the war in Ukraine and the suspension of gas flows into Western Europe from Russia, and the kind of clamoring of Western European governments to find gas exports from Africa, gas exports that Western European countries were perfectly willing to finance for their own gas use, but were unwilling to lend Africa to develop for their own gas use at home and electrification at home. So it’s that kind of, you know, double—what the Africans would call a double standard or hypocrisy that I think, you know, the stated goals of the Trump administration have, you know, potentially an ability to address in ways that are that are meaningful to African states.
Again, there’s a climate cost that’s associated with all of those projects, which I’m not the expert on. But certainly from a bilateral relationship, I think it will be welcomed by many African states, who have been, you know, really interested in developing their own internal resources.
SMITH: All right. Well, I want to thank our distinguished panel of speakers for this really wide-ranging discussion. I want to thank everyone who joined today’s virtual meeting. The audio and transcript will be posted on the CFR website. And obviously there’s a lot of ground left uncovered. Look forward to continuing these conversations. And very much appreciate your time today. Thank you.
OBADARE: Thank you.
CARSON: Thank you.
(END)
This is an uncorrected transcript.