Donald Trump’s second term as president could well lead to greater US engagement with the world’s fastest-growing continent, but in a strictly “transactional”, realpolitik sense, with national security – including securing access to critical minerals – taking centre stage. Human rights, development and environmental concerns will be discounted, foreign aid could be cut, and immigration curbed.

During his first term as president of the United States, Africa scarcely seemed to register on Trump’s personal radar. His most famous – or rather infamous opinion on the continent leaked from a 2018 bilateral meeting in the Oval Office with senators to discuss a path forward on an immigration deal. Trump reportedly railed against the visa lottery system, questioning aloud why America should take in people from “all these shithole countries” in Africa.

Top members of Trump’s national-security team, however, recognised the region as an increasingly key theatre in Washington’s rivalry with China, and for the same reason, Africa has not gone ignored by conservative strategists.

The diplomacy section of Project 2025, a conservative blueprint for a Republican administration laid out by the Heritage Foundation, provides clues as to the shape US policy towards Africa may take under Trump, who is not known for taking a comprehensive and consistent approach to foreign policy.

Tibor Nagy, who served as Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs under Trump, and previously served as ambassador to Guinea and Ethiopia, says Project 2025 lays out a “realistic” and less “ideological” approach vis-à-vis sub-Saharan African nations, which, he told The Africa Report, argues the US should not seek to hold them to a higher standard on human rights than it does for example Egypt or Saudi Arabia.

Prosper Africa, AGOA, and ‘transactional pragmatism’

The first Trump administration’s Prospect Africa scheme to boost US trade and investment closed 2,500 deals across 49 African nations, amounting to $120bn in economic value, or about $30bn annually. In comparison, the first five years of Bill Clinton’s more widely known African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) trade agreement saw US imports from Africa peaking at $10bn annually, notes Bright Simons, a prominent Ghanaian commentator.

“As the continent’s petroleum exports have declined, AGOA-enabled exports have plummeted from a 2008 peak of $66bn to just $10bn today,” Simons wrote in an editorial for The Africa Report.

“Amid this reality, some African analysts argue that transactional pragmatism could work in their favour. They see Trump as a deal-focused leader who wouldn’t shy from large fossil fuel deals. In this quid-pro-quo world, programmes like AGOA might persist for strategic reasons while tariffs rise across the board.

“Africa’s tariff-free access to the US for petroleum and critical minerals could become more valuable amid a turbulent global market.

“It’s easy to see the appeal of this simplified game theory. In a transactional world, only the economically formidable African countries – perhaps 10 out of the African Union’s 55 members – would have the leverage to play. The rest might struggle to assert influence individually.

“Yet, this hyper-transactional model could hold a silver lining. If a Trump-led world prioritises ‘what you bring to the table’, African nations may finally see that only through regional unity can they achieve real geopolitical agency.”

The Biden administration was careful not to make its engagement with Africa appear to be driven by realpolitik – a desire to counter the dominance of China, not least in extracting minerals critical for the transition to low-carbon energy sources – but on fostering fair trade and advancing human rights and development.

The Trump administration was more transparent, as voiced by then-national security adviser John Bolton, about the need to counter Beijing’s expansionist efforts, when launching the Prospect Africa scheme in 2018.

At the time, Bolton warned that China, through its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and position as the top sovereign lender, was employing the “strategic use of debt to hold states in Africa captive to Beijing’s wishes and demands”. Former Trump State Department director of Policy Planning Kiron Skinner now warns, in the diplomacy section of Project 2025, that Washington’s relative influence in Africa has declined further as the continent’s strategic influence has grown.

“Chinese companies dominate the African supply chain for certain minerals critical to emerging technologies. African nations comprise major country-bloc elements that shield China and Russia from international isolation for their human rights abuses — and African nations staunchly support China foreign policy goals on issues such as Hong Kong occupation, South China Seas dispute arbitration, and Taiwan,” he writes.

Skinner argues that the US should abandon efforts to tie trade and aid to governments’ stances on “abortion and pro-LGBT initiatives being imposed on them” and instead “focus on core security, economic, and human rights engagement with African partners and reject the promotion of divisive policies that hurt the deepening of shared goals”.

The Biden administration sought to promote democracy and human rights while countering the influence of China – but also Russia, which through the paramilitary Wagner group, now part of a larger umbrella group, the Africa Corps, is backing authoritarian governments in Mali and Niger and beyond, cutting security-for-resources deals.

Trump did provide Nigeria with means to combat Islamist insurgents – but he also pulled the US out of the UN Human Rights Council, the world’s leading human rights body, and has cozied up to Vladimir Putin. Russia seems poised to strengthen its political and security ties to the strongmen-led countries of Africa with no pushback from Trump.

AGOA … or fresh tariffs?

African countries such Uganda, which the US booted from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) over its crackdown on gay rights, could conceivably be brought back into the fold under Trump. The trade agreement, which has been at the core of Washington’s commercial engagement with Africa since 2000, provides eligible sub-Saharan African countries with duty-free access to the US market for over 1,800 products.

According to the Brookings Institution, a centrist US think-tank, there is a debate in the US as to whether the continent’s most-developed economy, South Africa, should be excluded from the AGOA renewal in 2025 — either on political grounds (ties to Russia and its “genocide” case against Israel) or possibly due to its status as an upper-middle-income country.

“US legislators who sponsored [legislation] that could impact South Africa’s participation in AGOA accuse Pretoria of undermining US national security and foreign policy interests by acting against its stated stance of nonalignment to side with ‘malign actors’, including Hamas, and that it continues to pursue closer ties with the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation,” African Arguments wrote on November 5 (Election Day in the US). 

Trump’s re-election places Africa’s renewal of AGOA – as a tariff-free access programme to US markets – under threat. He has always espoused more of a protectionist outlook than Biden, and this election campaigned on a promise to impose a universal 10% income tariff (or higher) on all foreign-made goods. During his previous administration, Trump said the AGOA scheme would not be renewed.

“A shift towards trade protectionism in the US would lead to a more pronounced strengthening of the dollar, larger falls in African local currencies and make it even for harder countries like Angola and Kenya to regain access to global capital markets,” writes David, Omojomolo, Africa Economist at Capital Economics.

“The former as well as Nigeria could also be hurt if Trump’s support for US oil and gas supply leads to lower global energy prices. There’s a lot of uncertainty about what will happen to aid flows and multilateral financing. But Africa’s critical mineral producers could reap benefits if the US intensifies its contest for influence in the region with China.”

Lobito Corridor, Elon Musk and mpox

In 2018, the first Trump administration did the unveil Prosper Africa scheme as well as the Development Finance Corporation (DFC), which funds development projects around the world. Biden kept both in place, and the DFC says it has so far invested more than $10bn in Africa.

Trump could keep both going, if not AGOA. His administration may well also adopt some elements of Biden’s policies, including funding for the Lobito Corridor, a US-led railroad project that would link the resource-rich Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Zambia and Angola to export battery metals, the export of which China already dominates.

If AGOA is extended, the prospect of inclusion or exclusion for individual countries could be wielded not just to further national interests but those of private US companies. Potentially that includes Tesla, which is keen to secure cobalt, a key ingredient in the batteries that power its electric vehicles. Its owner, Elon Musk – the world’s richest man and Trump’s most generous election campaign donor – has been promised a role in his administration.

US interest in the eastern DRC’s strategic resources will likely remain robust despite Republicans’ general disinterest in green energy, as the minerals needed for EV batteries are also crucial for the US defence industry, and the conflict-torn country the current focal point of US-China rivalry in Africa.

Meanwhile, Republican lobbyist Robert Stryk, speaking to The Africa Report fresh from hosting a Trump victory party, said had already heard from “five or six” countries potentially interested in his services – helping them get on Trump’s radar and winning the favour of the famously transactional US president.

“Direct engagements with the administration is going to be key for countries in Africa,” Stryk, who made millions of dollars during Trump’s first term representing multiple foreign clients, including Kenya, Somalia and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), told the Paris-based publication. “I would say understanding the Trump culture is key, and that culture is direct engagement to senior policymakers, unlike other administrations.”

“He’s way more transactional, he’s way more business-oriented, and he’s not going to preach to African countries. He’s going to provide [a] real opportunity for Africa,” Stryk says. “It’s going to be imperative for African nations to hire the right folks on the outside – consultants, lobbyists, who have a history with the Trump administration, with Trump, with a history in Africa, because there’s going to be a lot of people who are going to want their issues put at the forefront.”

An early test case of Trump’s “transactional pragmatism” approach regarding Africa could centre around a pandemic – the resource-rich DRC, home of the critical minerals coveted by Telsa and as well as the defence industry and AI companies, is the epicentre of the deadly mpox outbreak.

The continent’s main public health body is seeking assurances that his administration will provide the $500mn in funding and 1mn mpox vaccines doses promised in September by Biden.

What might Trump expect in return?