Por Eric Toussaint
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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair |
With the wave of African independence began in the late 1950s, the United States found itself facing an unprecedented situation. The European colonial empires that had dominated much of the continent since the late 19th century were rapidly disintegrating. In less than two decades, dozens of new states achieved sovereignty. However, many African leaders viewed this political independence as just the beginning. Leaders such as Kwame Nkrumah in Ghana, Patrice Lumumba in Congo, Ahmed Ben Bella in Algeria, Julius Nyerere in Tanzania, Modibo Keïta in Mali, and Sékou Touré in Guinea-Conakry argued that true emancipation also required control over natural resources, industrialisation, cooperation between African states, and a reduction in dependence on former colonial powers. Later, Thomas Sankara in Burkina Faso added the issue of debt cancellation to this agenda.
For Washington, these transformations took place against the backdrop of the Cold War. US leaders opposed non-alignment, pan-Africanism and African socialism, as well as anything that threatened their access to the continent’s strategic resources.
This policy took various forms depending on the period. In the 1960s, it notably involved covert operations, support for certain coups d’état and backing for leaders deemed more favourable to Western interests. During the Cold War, the United States supported several authoritarian regimes regarded as bulwarks against Soviet expansion or against revolutionary movements. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the fight against terrorism became the main framework for their military engagement in Africa. Finally, during the 2020s, the Biden administration and subsequently the second Trump administration placed Africa back at the heart of the strategic competition with China, prioritising the acquisition of critical minerals, transport infrastructure and the securing of supply chains.
The aim of this study is not to trace the full history of relations between the United States and each individual African country. Rather, it seeks to analyse the key constants in US policy on the continent through a number of particularly revealing episodes: the struggle against pan-Africanist leaders in the 1960s; the support given to strategic allies such as Mobutu or the South African apartheid regime; the emergence of AFRICOM after 2001; and, more recently, the reorientation of US policy in the face of China’s rising power.
African independence and the struggle against Pan-Africanism (1957-1969)
Ghana’s independence in March 1957 marked a major turning point in the history of the African continent. For the first time, a sub-Saharan African colony achieved sovereignty under the leadership of a mass nationalist movement. Its principal leader, Kwame Nkrumah, did not merely celebrate the birth of a new state. In his independence speech, he declared that “Ghana’s independence has no meaning unless it is linked to the total liberation of Africa”.
A year later, Sékou Touré’s Guinea provided another particularly significant example. On 28 September 1958, during the referendum organised by General de Gaulle’s France, the Guineans rejected the Constitution of the Fifth Republic and, with it, the plan for a ‘French Community’ that was intended to keep the African colonies within an institutional framework dominated by Paris. Sékou Touré, leader of the Democratic Party of Guinea (PDG), rejected independence limited to internal autonomy and asserted his people’s right to full and complete sovereignty. Guinea proclaimed its independence on 2 October 1958.
France immediately punished this break. As the colonial administration withdrew, the French authorities removed or took with them a significant proportion of the equipment and material resources available to the colony, going so far as to render certain buildings and facilities unusable. Guinea thus found itself, from the very outset, facing the economic and administrative consequences of its political choice.
Sékou Touré nevertheless aligned Guinea with the movement against colonialism and with the Non-Aligned Movement. Like Nkrumah, he believed that political independence was meaningless unless it paved the way for genuine economic autonomy and cooperation among African peoples. In particular, Guinea lent its support to liberation movements fighting against colonial rule, notably in the Portuguese colonies, and became a haven for several anti-colonial activists and organisations.
The trajectories of Ghana and Guinea thus differ, but they express the same aspiration: to transform legal independence into genuine emancipation. It is precisely this prospect that worries the former colonial powers and, more broadly, the United States, which seeks to preserve an international economic order favourable to Western interests.
These positions encapsulate the ambition driving a significant proportion of African leaders at the time. Independence must not lead to the fragmentation of the continent into weak and dependent states, but rather to the building of political, economic and cultural solidarity capable of resisting the former colonial powers and new forms of domination.
Nkrumah quickly became the most influential figure in this pan-Africanist movement. He hosted conferences in Accra bringing together African leaders, anti-colonial activists and representatives of liberation movements still fighting against Portuguese, Belgian, British or French rule.
In Washington, this development provoked growing opposition. The United States had officially supported the principle of decolonisation, partly to weaken the old European empires. But it did not wish to see the emergence of governments capable of challenging the international economic order, which was dominated by the major capitalist and imperialist powers. The problem was not merely ideological. Ghana controls significant cocoa exports, while other African countries possess strategic resources essential to Western industry: copper, cobalt, uranium, manganese, chromium and oil.
The Eisenhower administration initially hoped to maintain positive relations with Nkrumah. He made an official visit to the United States in 1958 and enjoyed a degree of sympathy among the American public.
However, his stance in favour of non-alignment, his rapprochement with Nasser’s Egypt, the People’s Republic of China and the Soviet Union, as well as his support for African revolutionary movements, fuelled animosity in Washington.
The deterioration in relations accelerated in the early 1960s. Ghana faced growing economic difficulties, while domestic opposition was gaining strength. In February 1966, while Nkrumah was on a visit to China and North Vietnam, a military coup overthrew him. Declassified archives reveal that the CIA was aware of the coup plotters’ plans and maintained close contact with opponents of the regime, while senior US officials sought Nkrumah’s overthrow by pro-Western forces. Nkrumah’s downfall served as a warning to many African leaders: the major Western powers met plans for continental autonomy with hostility.
The events in Ghana, however, were merely a side note to a far more serious crisis: that of the Congo.
Belgian Congo gained its independence following large-scale popular uprisings on 30 June 1960. Its vast territory contained some of the world’s most significant mineral resources, notably the copper and cobalt of Katanga, as well as the uranium of Shinkolobwe, which had been used in the manufacture of American atomic bombs during the Second World War. The new Prime Minister, Patrice Lumumba, embodied the hope for truly sovereign independence.
At the official ceremony in Leopoldville, in the presence of King Baudouin, Lumumba delivered a speech that broke with the rhetoric of gratitude expected by the Belgian authorities. He denounced the humiliations of colonisation and affirmed the Congolese people’s determination to control their own destiny. This speech immediately provoked fierce opposition in Brussels and Washington.
A few days after independence, the Congolese army mutinied, while the province of Katanga, led by Moïse Tshombe and backed by Belgian mining interests, seceded. Lumumba sought the UN’s help to preserve the country’s unity. Faced with the inadequacy of this assistance, he turned to the Soviet Union for logistical support.
Declassified documents show that the Eisenhower administration regarded Lumumba at that time as a serious threat to Western interests in Central Africa. The CIA was tasked with removing him from power. Several assassination plots were considered.
In September 1960, President Joseph Kasa-Vubu announced his dismissal, while Colonel Joseph-Désiré Mobutu took control of the army with the support of the United States and Belgium.
Lumumba was arrested, transferred to Katanga and then handed over to the secessionist authorities; he was executed on 17 January 1961. [1]
For a long time, the Belgian and US governments downplayed their responsibility for this assassination. Belgian and US parliamentary enquiries, as well as the work of numerous historians, have since established the involvement of the Belgian authorities and the central role played by the CIA in the efforts to politically eliminate Lumumba.
The impact of this event extended far beyond the Congo. For much of African public opinion and the Non-Aligned Movement, Lumumba’s assassination became a symbol of Western powers’ intervention against leaders seeking to control their countries’ resources and pursue an independent policy.
At the same time, other experiments in African sovereignty were also arousing American suspicion.
In Mali, Modibo Keïta embarked on a policy of economic planning, developed state-owned enterprises and sought to reduce dependence on the former French colonial power. In Tanzania, Julius Nyerere developed the Ujamaa project, a form of African socialism based on rural communities, while actively supporting the liberation movements in southern Africa. In Algeria, Ahmed Ben Bella transformed Algiers into the capital of the revolutionary Third World, welcoming anti-colonial activists and revolutionaries, including Che Guevara and representatives of the Vietnamese FLN, the Angolan MPLA, the Guinea-Bissau PAIGC [2], and the South African ANC.
In every instance, US officials took action to combat, by any means necessary, the formation of a transnational network of anti-imperialist and revolutionary tricontinental (Africa–Asia–Latin America) solidarity.
One of the targets was Mehdi Ben Barka. A Moroccan opposition figure and former president of the National Assembly, Ben Barka became one of the main organisers of the Tricontinental Conference, which was scheduled to take place in Havana in 1966. He aimed to bring together the revolutionary movements of Africa, Asia and Latin America within a global anti-imperialist framework. His abduction in Paris in October 1965, in an operation involving the Moroccan and French security services, provoked strong international reactions. There is substantial evidence to suggest that the US intelligence services were aware of the operation against Mehdi Ben Barka and had infiltrated the Moroccan security services.
Following requests made under the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), the CIA acknowledged in 1976 that it held more than 1,800 documents relating to Ben Barka and his case.
By the late 1960s, the radical pan-Africanist movement had already suffered significant losses. Lumumba had been assassinated, Nkrumah overthrown, Ben Bella removed from power by Boumediene’s coup d’état, and Nasser had lost the Six-Day War launched by Israel in 1967, while several other leaders faced economic, diplomatic or military pressure. The Organisation of African Unity, established in 1963, endured, but its federalist ambitions were considerably curtailed.
For Washington, this period represented a major strategic success. The United States had succeeded in preventing the formation of a pan-African bloc capable of pursuing a coordinated economic policy and challenging Western access to the continent’s resources. But this victory ushered in a new phase: that of supporting allied regimes tasked with ensuring the stability of the regional order during the Cold War.
Having helped to sideline or remove several pan-Africanist leaders, Washington set about consolidating a regional order based on allies deemed reliable. At the same time, the liberation movements of southern Africa became one of the main theatres of the Cold War on the continent.
From Mobutu to racist South Africa: consolidating a regional order favourable to Washington’s interests (1965-1991)
Washington’s objective was now no longer merely to prevent the emergence of governments deemed hostile but to consolidate a stable political environment that would guarantee the defence of Western interests in a region rich in minerals and energy resources.
This strategy led the United States to support several authoritarian regimes presented as bulwarks against communism. The most emblematic case is that of the Congo, which became Zaire in 1971.
Following his first coup d’état in September 1960, and then his definitive seizure of power in November 1965, General Joseph-Désiré Mobutu gradually established himself as one of Washington’s key African allies. For nearly three decades, his regime received considerable military, financial and diplomatic aid from the United States, as well as from Belgium and, later, France. Despite systemic corruption, severe repression of the opposition and the embezzlement of a significant portion of mining revenues, Mobutu enjoyed consistent support from successive US administrations.
This support cannot be explained solely by the Zairian leader’s avowed anti-communism. Zaire occupies a central geographical position in Africa and possesses strategic resources of the utmost importance. The copper and cobalt from Katanga were indispensable to several Western industries, while the country served as a vital logistical base for operations against liberation movements in southern Africa. For Washington, the stability of Mobutu’s regime appeared to be a prerequisite for maintaining regional stability.
Over the years, Mobutu transformed the state into a clientelistic system in which public resources fuelled his considerable personal enrichment. While external debt rose and infrastructure deteriorated, the Zairian president amassed a private fortune estimated at several billion dollars. The World Bank and the IMF nevertheless continued to support his government for much of the Cold War, illustrating the primacy of geopolitical considerations over the demands for effective governance often invoked in other contexts.
Washington’s support for Mobutu was part of a broader strategy to defend the capitalist and imperialist order in Africa, whether in its colonial or neo-colonial form.
Washington’s complicity with colonialist Portugal and apartheid South Africa
This is demonstrated by its support for Portugal, which stubbornly refused to grant independence to its African colonies. Under António de Oliveira Salazar, and later Marcelo Caetano, Lisbon waged protracted colonial wars in Angola, Mozambique and Guinea-Bissau in order to preserve what it regarded as overseas provinces. The United States protected its Portuguese ally. Portugal occupied a strategic position within NATO, and the United States attached particular importance to maintaining its military installations in the Azores, which were essential for air and naval links between North America, Europe and the Middle East. This strategic priority led Washington to effectively accept the prolongation of Portugal’s colonial wars until the Carnation Revolution of 1974.
Washington’s complicity with colonialist Portugal and apartheid South Africa is also illustrated by the refusal of the US-dominated World Bank to enforce the sanctions imposed by the UN against the regimes in Lisbon and Pretoria [3] . It is also worth highlighting the IMF’s financial support for South Africa in the 1970s [4] .
Indeed, at the same time, South Africa occupied an equally important place in US strategic calculations. Since the National Party came to power in 1948, the apartheid regime had imposed institutionalised racial segregation, which evoked increasing condemnation from the international community. US administrations officially denounced this policy, particularly within the United Nations. However, for a long time, this condemnation had limited practical consequences.
Geopolitical and economic factors significantly influenced this position. South Africa possessed significant reserves of gold, platinum, chromium, manganese and other minerals essential to Western industry. It also controlled the Cape of Good Hope, a vital maritime route when the Suez Canal was closed. Above all, Pretoria was seen by Washington as a key partner in the fight against movements supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba in southern Africa.
This convergence became particularly evident under the administrations of Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. From the early 1980s onwards, the policy known as ‘constructive engagement’, championed by Under-Secretary of State Chester Crocker, prioritised dialogue with Pretoria over economic sanctions which, according to Washington, were likely to strengthen revolutionary movements. This approach drew fierce criticism both within the US Congress and from the international anti-apartheid movement. In 1986, Congress finally passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, imposing sanctions on South Africa despite President Reagan’s veto.
Liberia provides another telling example of Washington’s support for an authoritarian regime during the Cold War. On 12 April 1980, Master Sergeant Samuel K. Doe overthrew and assassinated President William Tolbert in a military coup. Washington regarded Doe’s regime as a key anti-communist ally in West Africa. The Reagan administration significantly strengthened this relationship. In 1981, the United States sent 100 Green Berets and a destroyer to Liberia to demonstrate its support for Doe’s military government, while US economic and military aid increased substantially during the first half of the 1980s.
It is, however, in Angola that the contradictions in US policy are most clearly evident.
When Portugal withdrew in 1975, three movements vied for power: the MPLA, the FNLA and UNITA. Rapidly, the Angolan civil war became an international conflict. The MPLA received support from Cuba and the Soviet Union, while the FNLA and, above all, Jonas Savimbi’s UNITA were backed by the United States, Mobutu’s Zaire and South Africa.
As early as 1975, the Ford administration authorised a large-scale covert CIA operation, known as IA Feature [5], designed to prevent an MPLA victory. Despite this intervention, the deployment of tens of thousands of Cuban soldiers enabled the Angolan government to hold on to Luanda and ensure its survival.
In the years that followed, UNITA remained one of the main recipients of US aid in Africa. The Reagan
administration further increased this support as part of the ‘Reagan Doctrine’, which aimed to back armed movements fighting governments allied with Moscow. Washington welcomed Jonas Savimbi as a leader of the anti-communist resistance, while South African military operations continued on Angolan territory.
Cuba’s internationalist solidarity
In contrast, a profoundly different rationale drove Cuba’s intervention in Angola. Fidel Castro regarded Cuba’s involvement as an act of internationalist solidarity with African liberation movements. Between 1975 and 1991, nearly 400,000 Cuban soldiers served in Angola in successive waves. Their presence helped prevent the collapse of the MPLA in the face of offensives by UNITA and the South African army.
The conflict reached its climax during the Battle of Cuito Cuanavale, between 1987 and 1988, which was won by the Cubans and their allies, profoundly altering the regional balance of power [6]. The agreements that followed led to the gradual withdrawal of Cuban troops but also to Namibia’s independence and the withdrawal of South African forces from that territory.
Nelson Mandela emphasised on several occasions that the Angolan resistance and the Cuban intervention played a decisive role in weakening the apartheid regime. In his view, South Africa’s military defeat in Angola helped make the opening of negotiations inevitable; these negotiations would, a few years later, lead to the release of political prisoners and the end of institutionalised segregation.
Nelson Mandela emphasised that the aid provided by Cuba played a decisive role in weakening the apartheid regime.
Even as these upheavals were transforming southern Africa, a new generation of African leaders sought to revive the project of economic sovereignty for the continent. Among them, Thomas Sankara occupied a unique position.
Having come to power in Burkina Faso in August 1983, Sankara undertook far-reaching social, agrarian and administrative reforms. He promoted food self-sufficiency, fought against corruption, pursued an ambitious policy in favour of women’s emancipation, and openly criticised the mechanisms of financial dependence that bound African states to creditors in the North.
Thomas Sankara, debt and the challenge to the international economic order
At the heart of this challenge lay the issue of external debt.
For Sankara, the debt issue was not merely a financial problem. It represented a political instrument that curtailed the sovereignty of African states. In his view, indefinitely accepting the repayment of debts incurred under conditions often imposed by the former colonial powers amounted to maintaining a form of dependency after the official end of colonisation.
This is the essence of his famous speech, delivered on 29 July 1987 before the Organisation of African Unity in Addis Ababa [7]. Addressing African leaders gathered in the Ethiopian capital, Sankara called for collective action by the continent against the debt system. In particular, he stated that if Burkina Faso were the only country to refuse payment, it would be isolated and threatened, but that if all African states acted together, they could force creditors to reconsider their demands.
In this speech, Sankara directly links the issue of debt to that of development and sovereignty, declaring:
“The debt cannot be repaid, because if we do not pay, our creditors will not die. But if we do pay, it is we who will die.”
Thomas Sankara directly linked the issue of debt to that of development and sovereignty
Beyond the rhetoric, his speech championed a holistic vision of development: the fight against poverty, food sovereignty, investment in public services, women’s empowerment and the rejection of policies imposed from outside. A few weeks later, on 15 October 1987, Sankara was assassinated during the coup d’état that brought Blaise Compaoré to power.
The exact circumstances of his assassination remain a subject of debate, but the primary responsibility of the Burkinabè actors involved in the coup has now been largely established. There is no evidence of direct US involvement, unlike in the case of Lumumba or certain CIA operations in Central and Southern Africa. However, Sankara’s death occurred at a time when his stance on debt and his determination to break with structural adjustment policies directly challenged the international economic order championed by financial institutions dominated by Western powers.
The Sankarist experiment thus represents one of the last major episodes of the Cold War era in which an African leader attempted to combine political sovereignty, social transformation and a challenge to the economic mechanisms inherited from colonial rule.
Morocco: support for the monarchy and backing for claims over Western Sahara
Since Morocco’s independence in 1956, the United States has maintained a privileged relationship with the Alawite monarchy. During the Cold War, Washington regarded the kingdom as a stable ally against radical nationalist, socialist or revolutionary movements challenging the regional order dominated by Western powers.
Under Hassan II, despite an authoritarian regime marked by severe political repression during the ‘years of lead’, the Moroccan monarchy enjoyed American political and military support. Once again, the defence of US strategic interests took precedence over professed democratic principles.
This proximity is also evident in the issue of Western Sahara. Following Spain’s withdrawal in 1975 and the organisation of the ‘Green March’, Morocco took control of a large part of the territory, sparking a conflict with the Polisario Front, which Algeria backed . During the Western Sahara War, Washington provided significant political and military support to Rabat, viewing Morocco as a strategic partner in the fight against Soviet influence in North Africa.
In December 2020, the Trump administration went a step further by officially recognising Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara as part of the Abraham Accords. This decision represents a direct alignment with Rabat’s claims and breaks with the international position based on the organisation of a self-determination process under the auspices of the UN.
The Moroccan case confirms a consistent feature of US policy in Africa: the United States has regularly favoured monarchies and authoritarian regimes considered to be reliable partners, to the detriment of popular movements, democratic demands and the principles of self-determination.
III. From the “war on terror” to rivalry with China: new forms of Washington’s strategy in Africa (1991–2026)
After the Cold War: Africa in US strategy, caught between marginalisation and military interventions
The end of the Cold War profoundly altered Africa’s place in US foreign policy. For several decades, US foreign policy primarily viewed the continent through the lens of rivalry with the Soviet Union. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 appeared to diminish its strategic importance for Washington. Some US officials even considered that Africa was becoming a secondary concern in a world now dominated by American victory and the emergence of a “unipolar moment”.
This period did not, however, mark a withdrawal by the United States. The US remained deeply involved in African affairs, but the means of intervention evolved. Direct support for allied regimes — a key feature of its strategy during the Cold War — gradually gave way, at least in part, to more subtle forms of influence: aid conditionality, the leverage of debt and financial resources, diplomatic pressure and, following 11 September, a growing military presence and operations conducted in the name of the war on terror.
The US intervention in Somalia in 1992–1993 was one of the first examples of this new phase. Initially presented as a humanitarian operation aimed at facilitating the delivery of food aid, it turned into a military intervention against local militias. The Clinton administration significantly scaled back its direct involvement after the Battle of Mogadishu in October 1993, which resulted in the deaths of 18 American soldiers. The Somali trauma had a lasting influence on US policy in Africa: Washington subsequently placed greater emphasis on indirect forms of intervention, notably the use of special forces, the training and arming of African security forces, security partnerships and, increasingly, programmes designed to shape African political environments.
The 1990s also witnessed the 1994 genocide in Rwanda and the subsequent wars that ravaged the Great Lakes region. US caution during the Rwandan genocide, following the Somali experience, was widely criticised. At the same time, Washington sought to strengthen its relations with certain African states regarded as reliable partners, notably Egypt, Morocco, Uganda, Rwanda and Ethiopia.
The case of Sudan: from hostility towards Bashir’s regime to pragmatic cooperation, then to cautious support for the democratic transition
Sudan also illustrates the contradictions in US policy in Africa. After seizing power through a coup in 1989, Omar al-Bashir established an authoritarian regime based on military dominance, political Islamism and the widespread repression of opponents. During the 1990s, the Sudanese government maintained close ties with international Islamist movements, notably with Osama bin Laden, who resided in Sudan between 1992 and 1996.
In the 1990s, Washington toughened its policy towards Khartoum: the United States placed Sudan on the list of state sponsors of terrorism in 1993 and imposed extensive economic sanctions on the regime in 1997. Following the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the confrontation with Washington intensified further.
However, US policy towards Sudan shifted in the early 2000s. Faced with the civil wars ravaging the country – and in particular the conflict in Darfur from 2003 onwards – Washington officially condemned the crimes committed by government forces and their allied militias. At the same time, however, US administrations sought to maintain a dialogue with Khartoum in order to promote regional stability, the fight against terrorism and the process leading to South Sudan’s independence in 2011.
The security turning point: the creation of AFRICOM and the militarisation of US intervention in Africa
The attacks of 11 September 2001 gave Africa a new place in the United States’ strategic priorities, but this shift had begun several years earlier. The bomb attacks on the US embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, on 7 August 1998 marked an important turning point. These attacks, carried out by al-Qaeda, left 224 people dead and more than 4,500 injured. Although the US embassies were the targets, the vast majority of the victims were Kenyans and Tanzanians: only 12 were American. These attacks demonstrated that Africa was not merely a peripheral theatre of the emerging transnational jihadist conflict but also a place where local populations were directly exposed to its violence. They led to a substantial strengthening of US counter-terrorism cooperation with East African governments and helped pave the way for the much broader shift in security policy that followed 11 September 2001.
The 11 September attacks effectively drew Africa into the US-led “global war on terror”. Islamist armed groups operating in Somalia, the Sahel, the Lake Chad basin and other parts of East Africa became increasingly important targets.
This development led to the creation, in 2007, of the United States Africa Command (AFRICOM), which became fully operational in 2008. For the first time, the entire African continent — with the exception of Egypt, which falls under the remit of the US Central Command — came under the responsibility of a dedicated US military command.
AFRICOM: a US military structure for the African continent
The creation of AFRICOM illustrates a major transformation. Washington primarily managed Africa during the Cold War through political alliances, military aid and covert operations. It was now integrated into a permanent military structure. AFRICOM has established training programmes for African armed forces, joint military exercises, intelligence operations and special forces missions, as well as aerial surveillance and drone capabilities.
The US base at Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti has become one of the main US military centres in Africa. Situated close to the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, it serves as a strategic platform for surveillance and military operations in East Africa, the Middle East and along key maritime routes.
US policy in the Sahel has become another major component of this strategy. Following the French intervention in Mali in 2013 against jihadist armed groups, the United States provided logistical support as well as intelligence and surveillance capabilities. The construction of the Agadez drone base in Niger illustrated the US’s growing involvement in the region.
However, this militarisation has yielded mixed results. Despite two decades of international operations, armed groups continue to gain ground in several regions. The coups d’état in Mali (2020 and 2021), Burkina Faso (2022) and Niger (2023) are evidence of a profound crisis in Western strategy in the Sahel. The new military authorities have denounced the French presence and, in some cases, have sought to forge new partnerships, notably with Russia. In Niger, the crisis has highlighted the limitations of this strategy particularly clearly. Following the coup in July 2023, the new military authorities demanded the withdrawal of French and American forces. Washington was ultimately forced to withdraw its troops from Niamey and, in August 2024, from its main drone base in Agadez.
Obama, Trump and Biden: between rhetoric of partnership and the return of great-power rivalry
The Obama administration attempted to reshape the image of US policy in Africa. The US President placed greater emphasis on economic development, governance and partnerships with civil society.
This new approach does not, however, signify an abandonment of strategic priorities. Under Obama, AFRICOM continued its operations and the US administration continued to regard security stability as a prerequisite for economic development.
The Trump presidency (2017–2021) introduced a different tone. The African continent features less prominently in presidential communications, but US strategy is beginning to be structured more around competition with China.
The publication in 2018 of the US strategy for Africa by National Security Adviser John Bolton explicitly states that Washington wishes to prevent Beijing and Moscow from using their economic and military investments to increase their influence.
This shift has become even clearer under Joe Biden. Faced with Chinese expansion in Africa, particularly as part of the New Silk Roads initiative, Washington is seeking to offer an alternative. The US-Africa Summit, held in Washington in December 2022 signalled this commitment to re-engagement. The Biden administration emphasised: private investment; infrastructure; supply chains; and the critical minerals needed for green and digital technologies. This new direction is clearly evident in the Lobito Corridor.
The Lobito Corridor: African minerals at the heart of the Sino-American rivalry
The Lobito Corridor project is arguably the most symbolic example of the new US policy in Africa.
This rail infrastructure links the mining regions of the southern Democratic Republic of the Congo and Zambia to the Angolan port of Lobito on the Atlantic Ocean. It aims to facilitate the export of strategic minerals, notably copper and cobalt.
These resources have become essential for 21st-century industries: electric batteries; electric vehicles; digital technologies; and energy infrastructure.
However, China holds a dominant position in several segments of these value chains. Chinese companies control a significant share of the extraction and, above all, the processing of Congolese cobalt. For Washington, supporting Lobito therefore serves a dual purpose: to offer an alternative to Chinese infrastructure and to secure Western access to the minerals essential for the energy transition.
The project is officially presented as a win-win partnership with the African countries concerned. But it also illustrates the new logic of geopolitical competition: infrastructure is becoming a tool for exerting influence, just as military bases were during the Cold War.
Trump II and the 2025 National Security Strategy: rivalry with China, control of resources and the externalisation of Western borders in Africa
Donald Trump’s return to the White House in 2025 makes Africa an explicit theatre of confrontation between the United States and China: Washington seeks to curb Beijing’s influence, secure access to Africa’s strategic resources and prevent China from consolidating its economic and geopolitical position on the continent.
This development explains Washington’s increased interest in minerals from the DRC, Zambian copper, the Lobito corridor and partnerships with certain African states that produce strategic resources. It also explains the growing importance attached to relations with Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
The agreements between Kigali and Kinshasa, backed by Washington, are presented as aimed at reducing tensions in the east of the DRC and promoting regional stability. However, they are in fact part of a broader context in which the United States is seeking to secure access to strategic mineral resources, notably coltan, cobalt and minerals required for new technologies.
Trump has also introduced a new dimension to the pressure exerted by the United States on African governments: persuading them to accept migrants deported from the United States, including people who are not nationals of the countries hosting them. Following the example of Western European governments, the Trump administration has increasingly resorted to so-called ‘third-country removals’, seeking to conclude agreements with African governments to take in people whom Washington wishes to remove from US territory. Rwanda has agreed to take in deportees in exchange for US financial support, while Eswatini has also agreed to take in people deported from the United States. Other African governments, notably South Sudan and Uganda, have been drawn into discussions regarding similar agreements.
Washington, like European states, is deporting migrants and asylum seekers to Africa
These agreements illustrate a broader shift in relations between Washington and African governments. The United States is increasingly seeking to externalise the human and political costs of its migration policy by transferring responsibility for deported individuals to poorer countries, sometimes in exchange for financial aid or other benefits.
In some cases, those deported have no prior connection with the African country receiving them. This trend extends to migration policy, with the logic already evident in security cooperation: African states are increasingly being called upon to fulfil functions that serve US strategic interests beyond their own borders.
It should not be forgotten that the White House is stepping up its use of the World Bank and the IMF to consolidate its influence in Africa, while deepening the neoliberal policies that have been widely implemented since the 1980s.
South Africa: a new point of tension with Washington
Finally, the relationship with South Africa illustrates a major transformation.
Washington viewed Pretoria as a strategic anti-communist partner during the Cold War. Today, the country has become a key player in the Global South, a member of the BRICS and an important economic partner of China.
South African foreign policy – notably its close ties with Beijing and Moscow, its role within the BRICS and its action before the International Court of Justice regarding Gaza – is causing significant tensions with Washington.
Under the second Trump administration, these tensions are intensifying. Donald Trump accuses the South African government of pursuing policies hostile to the interests of the Afrikaners and threatens to use economic levers against Pretoria. Elon Musk, a native of South Africa, is also intervening publicly in these debates by echoing the attacks on the South African government.
The South African government has tended to make concessions in response to Trump’s verbal aggression and his threats of trade sanctions, but the occupant of the White House still considers these concessions insufficient.
Conclusion
Covert operations and support for authoritarian or dictatorial regimes deemed favourable to Washington’s interests continue
Since the end of the Cold War, the instruments of US power in Africa have changed, but its fundamental objectives remain the same. Covert operations and support for authoritarian or dictatorial regimes deemed favourable to Washington’s interests continue; the US military presence has been consolidated and new security partnerships have been established. Faced with China’s growing influence, Washington is now seeking to regain some of the economic and strategic ground it has lost on the continent.
To secure its access to essential resources and safeguard its geopolitical interests, Washington also intends to prevent any resurgence of progressive pan-Africanism that might challenge this dominance.
The various powers operating in Africa have a vested interest in fostering conflicts there to weaken the peoples’ capacity for resistance and unity.
If the African peoples wish to secure the conditions for truly sovereign development – one that guarantees the realisation of human rights and respects Nature – they must oppose the claims of Washington as well as those of the other major powers, whether Western or Eastern. This means breaking with the logic of submission, dependence and accommodation towards powers that continue to view Africa primarily as an arena for geopolitical rivalry and as a reserve of raw materials, extracted by an underpaid workforce at the cost of catastrophic human, social and ecological consequences.
The real alternative lies in the African peoples reclaiming sovereignty over their resources, their political choices and their future.
Footnotes
[1] Éric Toussaint, In memory of Patrice Lumumba, assassinated on 17 January 1961, CADTM, published on 17 January 2026, accessed on 12 September 2026.
[2] The PAIGC played a key role in the liberation of Guinea-Bissau and Cape Verde. Its leader, Amílcar Cabral, one of Africa’s most prominent pan-Africanist and revolutionary figures, was assassinated in Conakry in January 1973.
[3] Éric Toussaint, The World Bank: A Critical History, Pluto Press, Chapter 3, pp. 41 – 42, accessed 12 September 2026.
[4] Éric Toussaint and Patrick Bond, South Africa: The support of the World Bank and the IMF to the Apartheid regime’, CADTM, published on 29 April 2019, accessed 12 September 2026.
[5] See the declassified document produced by the CIA: CIA’s secret war in Angola, published on 12 October 2004, accessed on 12 September 2026
[6] In 2026, while Cuba’s very survival was threatened by a shortage of hydrocarbons due to the blockade imposed by Washington, the Angolan leaders—heirs to the MPLA—demonstrated a total lack of reciprocity and solidarity with Cuba by failing to send oil to the Caribbean island. The Angolan leaders, whose main economic partner is China, wish to maintain the best possible relations with Washington, even if it means completely abandoning those who helped them at the cost of enormous sacrifices in the 1980s.
[7] Watch the video of Thomas Sankara’s speech: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DfzoToJEnu8&t=21s accessed on 12 September 2026. Read the text of his speech: https://www.cadtm.org/A-United-Front-Against-the-Debt accessed on 12 September 2026
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