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During the first week of December, President Trump convened the leaders of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo to sign a peace agreement. The commitment involved an end to years of warfare in the unstable eastern DRC, describing it as an opportunity for businesses in all three nations “to make a lot of money”.

Shortly after, however, a starkly different strategy for instability emerged. It was declared that U.S. forces had executed Christmas Day airstrikes in a region of Nigeria, targeting sites associated with the Islamic State (IS). In a social media post, the President warned, “I have previously warned these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was.”

An Evident Shift in Policy

These divergent actions encapsulates the defining tenet of the U.S. policy towards sub-Saharan Africa in this period: a stepping back from promoting democracy and human rights in favor of a avowed focus on trade and stopping hostilities—even as this squares with the nascent air campaign in Nigeria is an open question.

“Our view has shifted from Africa as a continent in need of handouts, but as a capable commercial partner. ‘Trade, not aid,’ a slogan often repeated for years, is now truly our policy for Africa,” stated a senior U.S. state department official on a visit to Côte d’Ivoire in March.

A White House spokesperson reinforced this, commenting the President “approaches Africa not as a charity case, but as a powerhouse partner. Under his leadership, American capital, technology, and diplomacy are helping African nations achieve stability, build real energy independence, and turn their natural wealth into jobs and opportunity.”

Strategic Results and Inconsistencies

This change is consequential, but experts caution it is premature to gauge its impact. The approach is intertwined with the President’s unconventional diplomacy, which has included feuds with long-standing U.S. partners and negative rhetoric towards Africans.

“The guiding idea is, if it’s in the long-term or short-term interest of the United States, as I see it, then I’m going to do it,” explained an analyst for Africa studies at a prominent foreign policy council.

Major actions have included:

• Shutting down the primary U.S. international development agency, USAID. Research estimates this could lead to millions of preventable deaths globally by 2030, with a large number in Africa.
• Enacting visa restrictions on citizens from numerous African countries and suspending most refugee admissions.
• Implementing a global tariff campaign that has hurt African businesses dependent on U.S. markets, such as textile manufacturers in Lesotho.
• Letting a longstanding U.S.-Africa trade preference act, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), to expire without renewal.

Geopolitical Apathy and Strains

Differing from his immediate predecessors, the President did not travel to sub-Saharan Africa during his first term. His most notable engagement with African affairs was referring to nations on the continent with a vulgar slur, which he later admitted using.

“Africa clearly runs dead bottom in his list of priorities, not just for the President, but for the administration in general,” stated the Africa program director for an international conflict resolution organization. He pointed to the recent U.S. National Security Strategy, which devoted only three paragraphs to Africa in a 29-page document.

A notable disagreement has erupted with South Africa, seemingly spurred by claims of persecution against the white minority. This led to a U.S. boycott of the G20 summit in Johannesburg and threats to block South African delegates from the next meeting.

“The claim of a ‘white genocide’ happening in South Africa fits perfectly now with U.S. political culture and the idea that diversity is not welcome, it’s a threat,” observed a veteran South African journalist based in Washington.

Transactional Diplomacy and Targeted Action

An analogous tension appeared with Nigeria in November, when the President threatened to cut aid and send in the military “guns-a-blazing” over the killing of Christians. This ran up against Nigeria’s complex reality as a nation composed between Christians and Muslims and plagued by security crises affecting both groups.

Some Nigerian analysts noted that the stern rhetoric may have pushed the government into greater action on security. After the Christmas airstrikes, Nigerian officials said they had consented to the U.S. intervention and might collaborate on further actions.

Trump has publicly expressed his desire for a Nobel Peace Prize. His administration has mediated in the Congo conflict and dispatched a diplomat to try to negotiate a resolution in Sudan’s civil war, to date without success. While the Congo deal was reportedly broken quickly, it “at least serves to introduce a degree of diplomacy and a channel outside the battlefield,” said one conflict expert.

An Echo of Competitors

Observers characterize the new U.S. approach as similar to that of other major powers like Russia and China, who have expanded their involvement in Africa in recent decades based on commercial interests.

“This is a delayed recognition of African agency, and to that extent, it represents, at least at the level of symbols, taking Africa very seriously,” said one foreign policy analyst.

Ultimately, the new approach likely means that “a nation that doesn’t have anything to put on the table … is not on his radar.”

“The engagement that we are talking about does not seek to spreading the milk of human kindness, as it were, it is about a transactional posture towards Africa,” she added.