Nick Checker, the recently appointed head of the State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, wrote an email to bureau staff in January to “share a few thoughts” on how to implement the President’s Africa strategy. As articulated in the final three paragraphs on the last page of the 2025 National Security Strategy (NSS), the Trump administration’s plans for the continent include a focus on trade not aid, working to end or prevent conflicts, and “remain[ing] wary of insurgent Islamist terrorist activity.” Mr. Checker wanted to make explicit what was implicit in the NSS and National Defense Strategy: “To put it bluntly, Africa is a peripheral—rather than a core—theater for U.S. interests that demands strategic economy.”
This characterization of Africa as “peripheral” to U.S. interests represents a fundamental strategic failure that weakens America’s global leadership. By dismissing a continent that will soon hold one-quarter of the world’s population, controls critical minerals essential to U.S. technology and defense, and serves as a primary arena for competition with the United States’ strategic adversaries, this policy abandons six decades of bipartisan consensus for a false “economy” that guarantees far costlier consequences. The administration’s approach betrays American values and ensures that when Africa’s demographic and economic rise inevitably reshapes global power, the United States will lack the partnerships, credibility, and strategic position necessary to advance its interests—with tangible consequences for the American people.
A strategic miscalculation
Deeming an entire continent peripheral to U.S. interests is, simply based on numbers alone, a dangerously short-sighted conclusion. The strategic case for robust engagement with Africa has never been stronger. By 2050, Africa will be home to more than one-quarter of the world’s population. The continent has one of the world’s fastest-growing populations, largest free trade areas, most diverse ecosystems, abundant critical mineral deposits, and one of the largest regional voting groups (28 percent) in the United Nations. In an era of global disorder, Africa will be central to America’s future prosperity and security.
In an era of global disorder, Africa will be central to America’s future prosperity and security.
The Trump administration might argue that labeling Africa “peripheral” simply reflects hard choices in a resource-constrained environment, but this fundamentally misunderstands both the nature of the investment and the returns. Effective engagement does not require massive new resources; it requires sustained diplomatic presence, strategic development assistance, and consistent partnership, all of which the administration has intentionally disassembled. Arguing that an entire continent demands strategic economy is incongruous with the consequences of retreat: ceding critical mineral access to China, allowing terrorist safe havens to expand and conflicts to metastasize, losing one-quarter of U.N. votes on issues that matter to the United States, and abandoning the field to competitors who will shape Africa’s rise according to their interests, not America’s.
Major and middle powers view Africa as a critical region for engagement, a stark contrast with the Trump administration’s strategy. As America retreats, China and Russia continue to compete on the continent. China has cultivated continental relationships through copious lending, infrastructure investment, and security cooperation. In light of the Trump administration’s destabilizing economic policies, African nations are increasingly repaying Chinese loans in yuan rather than dollars. If this trend continues, it could lead to “de-dollarization” on the continent and erode the dollar’s reserve currency status, a cornerstone of American economic power. Russia has exploited governance and security vacuums, propping up corrupt and repressive regimes in the Central African Republic and across the Sahel in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Before the coups in the Sahel, the United States previously partnered with those governments to counter terrorism throughout the region. In exchange for this support, Moscow gained access to gold and other natural resources and expanded the market for their mercenaries and weapons. Without strategic, sustained American engagement on the continent, the United States can expect Russia to further undermine regional stability and U.S. counterterrorism objectives while providing the Kremlin with fertile ground to advance its interests.
Concurrently, rivalries between middle powers such as Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Turkey, and Qatar are increasingly playing out across Africa as these Gulf states fill the vacuum left by reduced American engagement. While some cooperation yields benefits, including critical investments in infrastructure, ports, and the energy sector, others produce devastating consequences, most notably the UAE’s widely documented support to the genocidal campaign of the Rapid Support Forces in Sudan. The current situation in the Horn of Africa illustrates how middle power competition can complicate regional politics with cascading consequences. In Sudan, the rivalry between Saudi Arabia and the UAE is impeding efforts toward a negotiated settlement and deepening the humanitarian catastrophe. The recent Emirati backing of Ethiopian and Israeli recognition of Somaliland’s independence has raised tensions in the Horn and provoked a sharp response from Somalia, leading it to further deepen its ties with Turkey and Qatar. Without sustained U.S. leadership and engagement, America is stuck in the middle of these competing interests, unable to shape outcomes or prevent proxy competitions that destabilize Africa—with direct implications for counterterrorism, migration, and global commerce.
Without sustained U.S. leadership and engagement, America is stuck in the middle of these competing interests, unable to shape outcomes or prevent proxy competitions that destabilize Africa—with direct implications for counterterrorism, migration, and global commerce.
Another area conspicuously absent from both the NSS and the State Department’s guidance is the importance of global health to U.S. national security interests. While Mr. Checker’s email reminded diplomats that “it’s not gauche to remind these countries of the American peoples’ generosity in containing HIV/AIDS,” it fails to offer any direction on how the Trump administration intends to protect Americans from infectious diseases that originate in Africa. Prior to dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), the United States provided more than two-thirds of bilateral aid for public health in sub-Saharan Africa—assistance that contained Ebola, Marburg, mpox, and other outbreaks, and protected the homeland in the process. In its place, the administration has signed bilateral health cooperation compacts with an initial set of African countries, but little is known about how they will be implemented. This leaves Americans with no clear answers about who will monitor outbreaks or how U.S. citizens will be protected from the next pandemic. These strategic realities make the administration’s policy contradictions even more damaging.
Policy contradictions and break with tradition
These vulnerabilities are compounded by an untenable diplomatic contradiction. Mr. Checker instructs officials to “unabashedly and aggressively message” about American investment and the “massive volume” of continued aid. Yet the administration pulled USAID funding without warning, leaving partners in crisis and resulting in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people within months of the aid ending. Withdrawing aid without warning and then insulting those who relied on it does not demonstrate mutual respect. Being overly self-congratulatory with countries suffering famine or recovering from natural disasters is not simply “gauche”; it severely undermines the credibility of the United States and its ability to advance its interests. Ultimately, if the approach is to tout American generosity in the absence of it, it is easy to imagine it will drive America’s African partners toward other powers offering more reliable, if less values-aligned, partnerships.
If the approach is to tout American generosity in the absence of it, it is easy to imagine it will drive America’s African partners toward other powers offering more reliable, if less values-aligned, partnerships.
Beyond these strategic shortcomings, the State Department message represents a clear break with American values and more than six decades of bipartisan U.S. policy. Directing staff to ensure aid is not driven by “moral imperatives,” as Checker suggested in his email, and conditioning humanitarian assistance contradicts principles articulated by President John F. Kennedy at the founding of USAID and followed by every administration since. As the leader of the richest nation on earth, President Kennedy championed foreign assistance for three reasons: humanitarian—what he called “our moral obligations as a wise leader and good neighbor in the interdependent community of nations”; national security—strengthening allies and preventing destabilizing ideologies; and geopolitical competition—ensuring American values shape global development. These principles endure because they reflect strategic and meaningful truths, not partisan preferences.
Practical implications
The Trump administration’s policy toward Africa also raises practical questions about implementation. After explicitly telling the bureaucracy that the region is peripheral, how does the administration expect its policy to be effective? It is confounding to imagine how U.S. government officials working on Africa policy must have taken this news—particularly those based overseas in some of the most austere and challenging environments. How does the bureaucracy, and the administration more broadly, argue for the necessary resources from Congress when the publicly stated approach is that Africa is not critical for U.S. interests?
In addition to the personnel and budget challenges this policy will generate, it is also unlikely to resonate with African leaders who are being courted by many others, including America’s adversaries. Further, this message reduces the likelihood that the United States will be able to advance its interests on the continent, an already challenging assignment. In particular, given President Donald Trump’s oft-stated desire to be seen as a peacemaker, this policy weakens American leverage in ending ongoing wars, such as in Sudan, and preventing new ones brewing elsewhere. The task for those thinking about the future of U.S.-Africa relations is deciding on where to begin.
Toward a new approach
The NSS and U.S. engagement under this administration has only confirmed what has long been known: President Trump sees African leaders as props in his own political soap opera. In the case of South Africa, he chose to bully President Ramaphosa about a fabricated “white genocide.” In December 2025, Trump announced a premature and now faltering peace deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo in a transparent last-ditch bid to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. America’s unpredictability is already affecting how African countries engage the United States. Countries across the continent are making irreversible bets with America’s competitors and adversaries. South Africa is diversifying its trade and security partnerships in response to policy clashes and tariffs, and the Kenyan government has reached a preliminary agreement with China that allows its exports duty-free market access. For the United States to recover from the Trump administration’s self-serving and haphazard policy toward the continent, a future administration will need to be clear-eyed about its priorities and approach to engagement in Africa.
First and foremost, there will need to be a clear declaration of America’s reaffirmed foundational principles for engagement with Africa. The next administration should treat this not merely as an opportunity to reverse recent policy errors, but as a chance to address longer-standing structural weaknesses and chart a genuinely new course in U.S.-Africa relations. Key themes such as African agency in international relations, recognition of America and Africa’s shared interests and shared future, and a commitment to treating African voices as equal to those of other American allies and partners will be critical in underpinning any strategy. Based on these core principles, the United States will need to develop a new paradigm for engagement with Africa—one centered not only on repairing the destruction done by the Trump administration, but on building a policy fit for the moment. Starting on day one, the next administration will need to rebuild partnerships; articulate clear policy goals on economic development, climate change, trade and investment, global health, foreign assistance, security cooperation, and other priority areas; and effectively communicate the importance of this work to the American public. The question is not whether the United States will reprioritize Africa, but whether it will have squandered so much credibility that its reengagement comes too late to matter.