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US-Africa think tanks are bracing for a more transactional approach to the continent under the Trump White House.
“We’re in a very different world,” said Zainab Usman, the Africa program director at Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, at the launch of a new briefing on the administration’s African policy priorities. “US developmental assistance is being fundamentally disrupted.”
Development agencies in Washington and their African partners will need to show that trade agreements, for example, are “demonstrably beneficial” to both sides, she said. While this might create uncertainty in future discussions, officials have a “tremendous opportunity to completely reshape how we do business for this community,” said Ramsey Day, a nonresident scholar in the Carnegie Africa Program.
Meanwhile some Africa-focused Capitol Hill staffers, who asked not to be named, voiced worry that US President Donald Trump’s “America first” agenda would dominate his foreign policy approach, as African concerns get deprioritized. “We have to show what’s in it for the US,” said one.
