By Nnamdi Elekwachi
Recently in Washington, during what was dubbed ‘the U.S.A.-Africa Summit,’ President Donald Trump of the United States treated the leaders of five African states to a ‘working lunch’ whose menu featured investment and other talks at the White House. Present at Trump’s lunch table were presidents of Guinea Bissau, Liberia, Senegal, Mauritania, and Gabon.
The theme of the summit itself evoked a rather critical sentiment in me, and I mean one that reminded me of Achebe’s piece, ‘Africa is People.’ But I shall return to Achebe and his essay at the later part of my piece.
Conversely, I’m not of the view that only five countries out of over fifty on the continent proportionately represented Africa in that outing. Even at a cursory glance, one curiously observes the absence of African heads of state from North Africa, East and South Africa. With the exception of Mauritania, a Northwest African country, only West and Central African states were invited from a continent that has five official (sub-) regions – North Africa; South Africa; West Africa; East Africa; and Central Africa. So in my humble view, what happened between those African leaders and their host in Washington could best be described as a multilateral summit, not in continental terms.
The summit shows that America is reviewing its stance in Africa. President Donald Trump, having reimagined America’s foreign policy focus in Africa and the wider world, is exploring the black continent for minerals and more. Per the latest development, Washington and Doha resolved yearslong dispute between Rwanda and the Congo D. R., following which Trump announced that America, in exchange for brokering peace on the continent, would now enjoy access to the minerals of the two warring nations. With this compromise given America gained a foothold in the resource-rich Congo and even Rwanda.
Mineral extraction has always been at the core of America’s economic interest in Africa, and Trump isn’t backing out on this. Congo D. R., for example, is a country sitting atop over 50% of the world’s cobalt reserves, including other rare earths, while Rwanda has lots of tourist attractions with a slew of unharnessed deposits of gold, tungsten, kaolin and a few other gemstones; something Trump considers quite strategic to his Make America Great Again (MAGA) initiative.
Apart from mineral extraction, the U.S. looks to evade a looming social problem it may find hard to contain in the future.
America could likely face a social upheaval as countries of origin of most of its foreign detainees no longer want to accept back their citizens after long detention periods in the U.S. Africa and countries like El Salvador became the choice destination for mass deportations. The island kingdom of Eswatini, formerly known as Swaziland, even accepted to accommodate some of these detainees, reminding one of the now-aborted despicable resettlement policy Rwanda had wanted to implement in East Africa with Britain. Rwanda was willing to accept £290 million and more in exchange for offering its territory as a dumping ground in the name of British asylums only for the policy to be halted after the Tories lost election to the Keir Starmer-led Labour Party.
Although what these five African countries proposed to their American host was clear, there is palpable apprehension that the U.S. may get access to raw materials and a resettlement deal for released non-American prisoners into the bargain.
Nigeria’s foreign affairs minister, Yusuf Tuggar, last week, stated that the single-entry visa policy, which The State Department said was based on ‘reciprocity,’ was targeted at Nigeria because of the West African country’s refusal to receive American detainees of Venezuelan descent.
It is glaring that Trump’s era looks to end dollar diplomacy by tightening the purse strings of the USAID following which loans, aids, and sundry related interventions had continued to dry up. Already, the African Growth and Opportunity Act, AGOA benefits are collapsing under the weight of Trump’s tariffs and this is a direct message to Africa that America, under Donald Trump, will not entertain free riders. So shipments between Africa and the U.S. may likely have Africa supply minerals to the latter and in return receive undesirable humans therefrom in the, wait for it, twenty-first century!
What, one may ask, is aligning the U.S. with these five African countries, ‘low-hanging fruits,’ as the Western media called them?
Here is where it gets even more interesting: the combined trade volume of Senegal, Mauritania, Guinea-Bissau, Gabon, and Liberia with the United States is less than Nigeria’s trade volume with the same U.S., not to even talk about South Africa, Egypt, Morocco, and other African states.
Recently, America’s ambassador to Nigeria, Ambassador Richard Mills, told a gathering at the Lagos Business School that Nigeria’s trade with the U.S. in 2024 stood at about 13 billion USD, representing almost a 15% year-on-year growth compared to 11.2 billion USD reported in 2023. With this, Nigeria, he said, became the second-largest trading partner of America on the continent, after South Africa. With neither South Africa nor Nigeria at that lunch table, suspicion rose.
It is true that there is the principle of sovereign equality – the notion in international law that all states of the world are equal – and each state has a flag and a permanent mission at the UN, but Trump is not known to be a respecter of international law or equality. How he treated his African guests is not in the least revealing of this fact. The backhanded compliment to Joseph Boakai, the Liberian president, over the latter’s mastery of English is an open insult even though it left many wondering what a man like Donald Trump knows about Liberia.
Liberia was established by the American Colonisation Society, ACS in the nineteenth century. Even the capital of Liberia, the port city of Monrovia, was named in honour of James Monroe, former President of the United States, and it was just in the early eighties that the government of William Tolbert, the last Americo-Liberian to rule Liberia, was toppled by Samuel K. Doe.
Perhaps Trump is not a student of history, but then, there was Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa who suffered even harsher treatment at the same White House recently during a state visit in May.
Since Africa cannot exist in autarky, there is now a compelling need to review its engagements on the global scene, especially in light of Trump’s MAGA initiative.
There are many fora through which Africa engages the world today, but the benefits, if any, from these engagements, have yet to translate into economic well-being or an improved material condition for its people. For emphasis, there is the China-Africa Summit (now Forum for China and Africa Cooperation, FOCAC); the Russia-Africa Summit; Saudi-Africa Summit; and even India-Africa Forum Summit (IAFS). But all these platforms, often with strings attached, are aimed at making economic inroads in Africa. This is known as ‘the New Scramble for Africa’, a twenty-first century rationale that explains how the industrialised West, Russia, China and emerging economies subtly exploit Africa because of its vast resources.
Contemporary global powers have become competing interests in Africa. This is evidenced in the way these powers seek to maintain spheres of influence and presence on the continent reminding one of the nineteenth-century scramble for Africa, which marked the beginning of imperialism in Africa and later the dismemberment of it. Military alliances, trade agreements, cultural diplomacy, aids, mutual legal assistance, massive infrastructure, and the like are shaping this new relations. But all these are the soft power baits Africa MUST NOT fall for.
Experts and commentators say the emergence of BRICS is the reason Trump is trying to bully or beat back allies through his MAGA, but it appears the ship has sailed long ago.
BRICS states (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) now constitute a strong economic bloc that seeks to end America’s decades-long dollar hegemony. To de-dollarise international trade, the BRICS Payment System (known as BRICS Pay) and BRICS Reserve Arrangement, which pundits said could possibly counterpoise the SWIFT payment system and Bretton Woods system, had been floated.
What is more, the three largest trading partners of the U.S. in Africa: South Africa, Nigeria, and Egypt are in BRICS as member and partner states, signalling a shift in the dynamics of cooperation between the U.S. and her African allies. Even though Trump keeps talking big, reading these nations the riot act and issuing threats of sanctions and visa restrictions here and there, BRICS is not letting up. Trump has yet to fathom that in diplomacy all sticks and no carrots doesn’t win one a loyal ally. His ongoing tariff war is pushing away allies with a domino effect; and these losses add to China’s gains. Talk of zero-sum game! At the heat of the USAID funding cuts in Africa, China’s communist party voted in favour of low-interest loans in Africa.
Back to Achebe and his piece.
Shipping minerals away from Africa while shipping back to the continent undesirable human lots is like injecting a lethal dose in the system of an entire continent. Even if it is true that Trump doesn’t think highly of Africa, he has to understand that Africa is people. Yes, like Achebe said, Africa is people, and no less people than Americans, Asians or Europeans. Africa is humans, and humans are an asset, a resource, and everything once well mobilsed, equipped and empowered.
It was not by accident that Achebe, an African novelist, found himself as a special guest in the midst of international bankers, financial and development analysts during a forum of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, OECD where the talk of Africa and development was being held. It was in the eighties when the West had begun selling the idea of structural adjustment as an antidote to the black continent, then considered a proving ground sort of.
It was not exactly clear to Achebe what to say at such a gathering of seasoned experts, but when he finally had the floor, the novelist, there at the rostrum, reminded Europeans and other Western economists and financial experts present at that forum that Africa is people, not the West’s testing ground, plain and simple.
Said Achebe:
‘Here you are, spinning your fine theories, to be tried out in your imaginary laboratories. You are developing new drugs and feeding them to a bunch of laboratory guinea pigs and hoping for the best. I have news for you. Africa is not fiction. Africa is people, real people. Have you thought of that?’
Africa is people, let that serve as a message to America, China, Russia and other global powers that Africa is humans, real humans, not a junkyard of sorts for Europe or the West.
But I also think Africa must begin to think for itself, act and speak for itself. It should start with an inward appraisal and institutional reforms that help build a supranational union that can actually bring together all peoples and governments of Africa, regardless of ideological cleavages, sentiments and political dichotomies.
Corruption, self-perpetuating political empires, sit-tight syndrome, failed and unpopular leadership, are making coups d’etat seem an option or a necessary evil across the continent. The AU must strongly condemn these vices while bringing ECOWAS, ECCAS, SADC, EAC, CEN-SAD, etc under its banner as a common front. Africa is people, and therein lies the strength; it can expand and operate her market leveraging the African Continental Free Trade Area, AfCFTA to the fullest and demolishing all colonial barriers. Africa doesn’t have a body like the EU with similar customs and labour laws, but it can really begin by leveraging its human resources to drive regional growth as people.
Africa is people among the peoples of the world; and it deserves to be treated as such. People.
Nnamdi Elekwachi, a public affairs analyst writes from Umuahia, Abia State.
