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During the first week of December, the U.S. President convened the heads of state of Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo for a peace deal. His pledge was an end to years of warfare in the turbulent eastern DRC, framing it as an opportunity for businesses in all three nations to generate significant profit.

Weeks later, however, a completely opposite approach to conflict emerged. The administration announced that U.S. forces had executed Christmas Day airstrikes in north-west Nigeria, striking sites associated with the Islamic State (IS). In a social media post, the President warned, My prior warnings indicated these Terrorists that if they did not stop the slaughtering of Christians, there would be hell to pay, and tonight, there was.”

A Defining Strategic Pivot

These divergent actions exemplifies the core principle of the U.S. policy towards sub-Saharan Africa in this term: a moving away from promoting democracy and human rights in favor of a stated focus on trade and ending wars—despite the fact that this aligns with the nascent air campaign in Nigeria is an open question.

“We have moved past viewing Africa as a continent in need of handouts, but as a capable commercial partner. ‘Trade, not aid,’ a phrase often repeated for years, is now truly our policy for Africa,” stated a senior U.S. diplomat during a visit to Côte d’Ivoire in March.

A White House representative reinforced this, saying 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.”

Consequences and Contradictions

This change is significant, but analysts caution it is premature to assess its effects. The approach is complicated by the President’s personal style, which has included feuds with long-standing U.S. partners and insults directed at Africans.

“The organizing principle is, if it’s in the immediate or future interest of the United States, as I see it, then I’m going to do it,” commented a senior fellow for Africa studies at a influential foreign policy council.

Notable policy moves have included:

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

Diplomatic Apathy and Friction

In contrast to his recent predecessors, the President avoided sub-Saharan Africa during his first term. His best-known comment on African affairs was referring to nations on the continent with a derogatory term, which he later admitted using.

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

A notable feud has broken out 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 in 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.

Quid Pro Quo Relations and Selective Involvement

A similar tension emerged 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 said that the harsh rhetoric may have prompted the government into more responsiveness on security. After the Christmas airstrikes, Nigerian officials said they had authorized 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 end the fighting in Sudan’s civil war, as yet without success. While the Congo deal seems to have been broken quickly, it “at least serves to introduce a degree of diplomacy and a channel outside the battlefield,” noted one conflict expert.

An Echo of Other Powers

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

“It’s a long overdue 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.

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

“The diplomacy that we are talking about does not seek to spreading the milk of human kindness, as it were, it is about a quid-pro-quo posture towards Africa,” the journalist concluded.