A leaked email to staff by Nick Checker, the head of the United States State Department’s Bureau of African Affairs, in which he urges staff to trumpet the ‘generosity’ of the American people despite the Trump administration’s decision to shutter USAID, is as incendiary and embarrassing as it is damaging to Washington’s interests. ‘Africa is a peripheral – rather than a core – theatre for US interests,’ states Checker, adding that ‘framing Africa as “strategic” has often historically served bureaucratic and moral imperatives, not hard interests’. Checker’s email lists ‘opportunities for engagement’ such as negotiating settlements in Congo-Kinshasa, Rwanda and Sudan, but most relate to the US gaining access to critical minerals or fossil fuels.

Few African leaders were under any illusions about the Trump administration’s interest in their countries. But that has not stopped many of them hiring lobbyists in Washington with links to Trump’s inner circle. For some, Trump’s openly transactional style of diplomacy has its attractions. US lawmakers in Congress are now close to extending the African Growth and Opportunity Act until the end of 2028, with many citing AGOA as a vital counterweight to China’s economic influence across Africa. For Washington’s traditional diplomats, Checker’s comments minimised decades of carefully accrued soft power. The US still wields hard power but it can’t match China’s commercial outreach in Africa.