Africa: U.S.-Africa Policy in a Second Trump Term

Washington, DC — 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 on January 29, 2025 is part of CFR’s Transition 2025 series, which examines the major foreign policy issues confronting the Trump administration.

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Speakers: Johnnie Carson – Former Assistant Secretary of State for African Affairs; Former U.S. Ambassador to Kenya, Zimbabwe and Uganda; CFR Member. Cameron C. Hudson – Senior Associate, Africa Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies. Ebenezer Obadare – Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow for Africa Studies, Council on Foreign Relations.
Presider: Shannon L. Smith – Middle East and Africa Section Manager, Congressional Research Service; CFR Member

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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. 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.